By LORENZO SEARS, L.H.D, 

The History of Oratory from the Age 
of Pericles to the Present 

The Occasional Address, Its Compo- 
sition and Literature 

Principles and Methods of Literary 
Criticism 

American Literature in the Colonial 
and National Periods 

Seven Natural Lcuws of Literary Com- 
position 

Makers of American Literature 

Wendell Phillips, Orator and Agitator 

John Hancock, the Picturesque Patriot 



JOHN HAY 
Author and Statesman 



JOHN HAY 

Author and Statesman 

BY 
LORENZO SEARS 



NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1914 



Copyright, 1914 

Bt dodd, mead and company 



OCT 14 I^i4 

©CU380857 



TO 

PROFESSOR HARRY LYMAN KOOPMAN, 
A.M., LiTT.D. 

WHO AS LIBRARIAN OF BROWN UNIVERSITY 
PRESIDES OVER THE JOHN HAY LIBRARY 



'■ I 



PREFACE 

It is singular but not entirely exceptional 
that John Hay and his career should have re- 
ceived no extended treatment within a decade 
after his death. Doubtless the subject is dif- 
ficult by reason of rare qualities and of far- 
reaching diplomacy, but these need not have 
prevented a plain narrative of his personal, lit- 
erary, and political life. In the lack of such an 
account thousands pass the John Hay Memorial 
Library or read in its rooms without understand- 
ing its full significance, and thousands more all 
over the land are equally uninformed as to the 
position this scholar and statesman occupied. 
Many know that his name is the most distin- 
guished on the graduate roll of Brown Univer- 
sity; a goodly number will recall the authorship 
of the "Pike County Ballads" and other 
"Poems"; also the partnership with John Nic- 
olay in "Abraham Lincoln, a History." Fewer 
will remember the "Castilian Days," the anony- 



Preface 

mous "Breadwinners," or the occasional ad- 
dresses which complete and crown the output of 
John Hay as a man of letters. 

With regard to the statesman, some will rec- 
ollect that he was Secretary of Legation in 
three European cities, an Ambassador at the 
Court of St. James, and Secretary of State of 
the United States ; but not many will recall the 
capitals and kingdoms to which he was sent, 
the administrations during which he served, and 
above all what he accomplished for his country 
and the world by his masterly diplomacy. 

It is not strange that acquaintance with the 
man and his labours is limited. He took no 
pains to leave a personal record of himself and 
his work; he appointed no literary executor; 
his official history is in the archives of govern- 
ments at home and abroad. What has been 
said of him is scattered mainly in serial publi- 
cations which repose on the shelves of public 
libraries awaiting the visits of the curious. 

From these and more remote sources, with let- 
ters from those who remember him, a sketch 
has been attempted which shall not be too long 
for the busy reader nor too tiresome for one 



Preface 

who is not attracted by the intricacies of state- 
craft, but who may bo glad to know the main 
features of a life whose value to the nation and 
the world should be more widely understood 
and whose example in private and in public de- 
serves study and imitation. 

Besides the author's sources of information 
in publications contemporary with the life and 
upon the death of Mr. Hay, he is particularly 
indebted for letters to Mrs. Alice Hay Wads- 
worth of Mount Morris, N. Y., Dr. A. W. King 
of Redlands, California; E. W. Menaugh, Esq., 
Salem, Indiana; Charles E. Hay, Esq., Spring- 
field, Illinois; Hon. Elihu Root, Washington, 
D. C; Samuel Mather, Esq., Cleveland, Ohio; 
C. C. Buel, Esq., New York City; Rev. Edward 
M. Gushee, D.D., Cambridge, Mass., and Hon. 
Solon W. Stevens of Winchester, the last two 
being classmates of Mr. Hay in Brown Uni- 
versity. 

Providence, March, 1914. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Early Years i 

II Formative Influences ..... 23 

III Literary Labours 54 

IV Diplomacy 74 

V Impressions and Conclusions . . .111 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

John Hay Frontispiece 

John Hay Memorial Library . . Facing page i. 




< 



H-1 



uq 



o 



EARLY YEARS 

The boyhood of distinguished men is not al- 
ways prophetic of eminence. In school and on 
the playground there may be little to raise them 
above their fellows. Superiority there may be 
followed by later inferiority. Recall the pre- 
cocious pupils of the grammar school and the 
idols of the athletic field. Are they at the head 
of the procession now^ Possibly a few will 
stay there. Others will exchange places with 
some in the rear. xAs in a woodland recently 
cut over, there is nothing to indicate which sap- 
lings will rival the giants of the primitive 
forest. 

To discover early pre-eminence is the tempta- 
tion of biographers who undertake complete 
accounts of illustrious lives. Such discovery 
sometimes rests upon later achievements. It is 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

prophecy after the event, based upon ancestry, 
environment, or as a final resort upon a talent 
for industry, to some the equivalent of genius. 
In any case it is hard to prevent the blaze of 
ultimate renown from illumining early years, 
and sometimes the child is made the father of 
the man by an unconscious flare-back of glory, 
the glow of sunset irradiating the gates of the 
morning. Sometimes, too, a youthful reputa- 
tion grows like a myth with the advancing years 
and accumulating honours, helped on by 
friendly memories and generous tongues until 
the actual conditions of childhood become ob- 
scure. Yet every one wishes to know the ante- 
cedents of distinction. Hence the tracing of 
lineage and the attempt to discover reasons for 
the present in the past, and for the man in the 
child. Of reasons there is no lack in this in- 
stance. 

Near the middle of the eighteenth century 
one John Hay, the son of a Scotch soldier of 



Early Years 

fortune who had served in the army of the 
Elector Palatine, emigrated from the Rhenish 
Palatinate to America, settling in Virginia 
in 1750. Of four sons two rendered distin- 
guished service in the Revolutionary War. 
Adam, one of them, had received a military 
training in Europe and here won the favour of 
Washington. After the war he left Virginia 
and settled in Lexington, Kentucky. His son 
John at the age of iifty-iive became convinced 
that a slave state was not the place in which 
to bring up a family, and accordingly removed 
to Springfield, Illinois, assisted in making the 
river trip by Abraham Lincoln. Another 
John, his son, went to Salem, Indiana. He 
had graduated from Transylvania College and 
later received the degree of Doctor of Medi- 
cine. Settling in the little town of eight hun- 
dred inhabitants about 1830 he practised there 
for ten years. He married Helen Leonard, a 
native of Providence, Rhode Island, daughter 

< 3 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

of Reverend David A. Leonard, a man of high 
repute among his contemporaries for learning 
and eloquence, a graduate of Brown Univer- 
sity and the poet of his class. Four children 
were born in Salem: Edward, who died 
young; Augustus, who lived until a few years 
ago; a daughter, Mrs. Mary Woolfolk, still 
living in Warsaw, Illinois; John, the subject 
of this sketch, who was born October 8, 1838. 
A fifth, Charles, resides in Springfield, the place 
of his birth. In 1841 Doctor Hay removed to 
Warsaw. The physician was regarded as "a 
man of profound learning and broad culture 
as well as a skilful doctor; an honourable, clean, 
and brave man. During an epidemic of chol- 
era in Salem Doctor Hay never faltered in 
duty, daily and hourly facing the deadly pesti- 
lence, ministering to the suffering victims' 
bodily needs and comforting the spirits of the 
dying. For a while he was editor of the 
Indiana Monitor^ published in Salem, known as 

-C 4 > 



Early Years 

the cleanest paper ever published in the county. 

"Mrs. Hay was a strong-minded woman in 
the very best sense of the term. Her mental 
endowments were equalled only by her modesty 
and domestic qualities." ^ 

With regard to his forbears John Hay once 
remarked: "Of my immediate progenitors, 
my mother was from New England and my 
father from the South. The first ancestors I 
ever heard of were a Scotchman who was half 
English and a German woman who was half 
French. In this bewilderment I can confess 
that I am nothing but an American." But he 
was a type of the American who is to inherit 
the land, whose composite character may ac- 
count for creditable attainment. Believers in 
the inheritance of formative traits will have an 
explanation of characteristics of the son in what 
has been said of his father and mother. 

^ From a letter of Doctor A. W. King of Redlands, Cali- 
fornia, a friend of the family. 

-C 5 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

The quaint old town of Warsaw \^as to be- 
come the home and school town of Hay's boy- 
hood. There were features about it which 
must be reckoned to the credit of environment, 
as some circumstances already mentioned must 
be included among hereditary influences. The 
boy's second home, statelier than the cabin 
where he was born, stood on a bluff of the 
Illinois bank of the Mississippi half way up the 
State, commanding a broad view of the river 
and the Missouri country beyond, whose sun- 
sets were recalled in after years as "more beau- 
tiful than those of Italy." It was the day of 
river boats and river men with ways of their 
own, to be commemorated in appropriate verse 
by a lad who, as his sister remembers, "had the 
habit of stringing his words together into 
rhymes." The county was in the current of 
emigration from the East and the Border States 
to the remote plains and the Pacific, and espe- 
cially to the disputed territories where the con- 



Early Years 

flict for freedom or slavery was to be waged. 
Practically, Illinois was a slaveholding State 
with 4000 negroes in bondage in the lower 
counties. The boy's father by traditions of the 
family was opposed to slavery and the anti- 
slavery principles which the son imbibed had 
the firmest foundation. 

His education began in the little brick school- 
house which is still standing, spared from de- 
molition at his request. Here he learned what 
was to be acquired from schoolmaster Holmes 
and his successors until he was thirteen, sup- 
plementing his English courses by the study of 
Latin and Greek under his father's direction.^ 
When he was twelve he had read six books of 
Virgil and some Greek, acquiring meantime a 
speaking knowledge of German from an itin- 
erant instructor. Though not remarkably 
strong, his health was good and his disposition 
happy. His distinction among his schoolmates 

2 A. S. Chapman in the Century, 78 ; 444, 

-c 7 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

was in his ability to absorb knowledge; and a 
marvellously retentive memory made his early 
acquisitions something more than contributions 
to mental discipline. Reminiscences of the 
Thomson school speak of the ease and fluency 
of Hay's translations, his knowledge of con- 
struction, and of his advance beyond the ordi- 
nary boys in general education. For instance, 
he had learned something of geology from the 
state geologist, enough to be familiar with va- 
rious periods and extinct forms of life. That 
he was more than a trilobite himself, buried be- 
tween layers of books, may be gathered from 
this added testimony: "We all remember 
John Hay at that time as a red-cheeked, black- 
eyed, sunshiny boy, chuck full of fun and devil- 
ment that hurt nobody. He spoke German like 
a native, having picked it up just as he had 
gathered an inexhaustible repertoire of river 
slang from the steamboat men, which served its 
turn later on in the Tike County Ballads,' 



Early Years 

which I have never liked, for the reason that 
they never suggested John Hay to me. Only 
at moments of riotous mental dissipation would 
he give expression to such stuff as appears in the 
'Ballads,' and then to work off his superabun- 
dant humour." ^ 

When his grammar school days were over a 
larger opportunity was offered him by an uncle, 
Colonel Milton Hay, living in Pittsfield, the 
county seat, a lawyer, politician, and man of 
influence in the region. Offering his nephew a 
home in his own house, he also placed him in 
a private school kept by a Mr. John D. Thom- 
son and his wife, where he continued prepara- 
tory studies for the higher education which both 
his father and his uncle designed for him. 
Soon he was pursuing these studies still further 
in a school In Springfield which was later known 
as the Lutheran Concordia College. These sev- 
eral schools mark the period when the new set- 

3 W. E. Norris. 

< 9 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

tlements of what was then the Far West were 
mindful of many a Pittsfield and Springfield in 
the East for which they had been named, and 
according to their ability they were, like their 
Puritan predecessors, "not going to let good 
learning perish from among them." 

But Western colleges had not yet attained the 
standard of excellence which they have since 
reached and Eastern institutions were sought by 
those who could afford the expense. Accord- 
ingly his uncle determined to send John to 
Brown University. Being himself a Baptist, he 
may have had hopes of directing his nephew's 
inclinations toward the ministry, which he had 
at one time, into service in that denomination 
rather than in the Presbyterian Church with 
which the boy had been associated. Other 
reasons may have been found in the fact that his 
grandfather had graduated from Brown in 1792 
and that Providence had been his mother's early 
home. In any case he came East, four hun- 



Early Years 

dred miles further than the other two Western 
men in his class from Cincinnati ; the rest of the 
class being from New England, except one 
from New York. 

His preparation qualified Hay for entrance as 
a Sophomore in the fall of 1855, in the class of 
1858. He therefore escaped whatever were the 
predecessors of the present first-year indigni- 
ties of College Street north sidewalk and the 
skullcap and button. However, he did not es- 
cape the awful mysteries of initiation into the 
Theta Delta Chi Fraternity, which was cele- 
brated with unusual ceremony in consideration 
of a glorious triumph over rival societies that 
had been slower to discover the real merits of the 
Far Westerner. It is said that their howl of 
disappointment the next morning as Burdge and 
Stone escorted their captive to his seat in 
chapel, and the responding cheer from Theta 
Delta delayed devotional procedures at the desk 
and interfered sadly with them over the rest of 

-C 11 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

the house. Already in the few weeks that the 
new Sophomore had been in college his promise 
of success made his acquisition a famous victory, 
whose importance subsequent years were to con- 
firm and augment. 

After the Fraternity came the Faculty. In 
these days they would be preceded by the Nine 
and the Eleven, but football and baseball had 
not attained pre-eminence in the middle of the 
last century. Accordingly President Barnas 
Sears, D.D., was then the principal figure of the 
academic group, followed by Alexis Caswell, 
Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astron- 
omy; George I. Chace, LL.D., Professor of 
Chemistry and Physiology; William Gammell, 
A.M., Professor of History and Political Econ- 
omy; John L. Lincoln, A.M., Professor of the 
Latin Language and Literature ; Rev. Robinson 
P. Dunn, A.M., Professor of Rhetoric and 
English Literature; James B. Angell, A.M., 
Professor of Modern Languages; Samuel S. 

•C 12 > 



Early Years 

Greene, A.M., Professor of Mathematics and 
Civil Engineering; Albert Harkness, Ph.D., 
Professor of Greek Language and Literature; 
Nathaniel P. Hill, Professor of Chemistry, and 
Reuben A. Guild, Librarian. The chair of the 
Theory and Practice of Agriculture was vacant, 
but the other professorships, including the 
President's course in Intellectual and Moral 
Philosophy, show what was open to the student 
without much exercise of his elective affinities 
or preferences for down-hill grades to a degree. 
What was required furnished a good foundation 
for professional or business careers and apprecia- 
tion of attainments in fields beyond one's own 
specialty. If John Hay had taken anticipatory 
courses in theology, law, medicine, or pedagogy 
would his diplomacy have been as masterly as it 
was in subsequent years? Therefore his suc- 
cess need cause no crowding of classes in Inter- 
national Law. Diplomats, like poets, are born 
and can be made in the classroom no oftener 

< 13 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

than eminent writers. Indeed it was as one of 
this craft that young Hay's education helped to 
distinguish him among his fellows. He might 
have recited well what other men had put down 
in books, for he had an excellent memory, and 
might have used it to obtain the valedictory 
which fell to Joseph Gilmore, or Arnold Green's 
Salutatory, if these were then the rewards of 
scholarship. But creative work, as distinct 
from recalling the statements of text-book or 
lectures, appears to have been the forte of John 
Hay. His classmates recognised his literary 
tastes and promise, especially in what is the 
gift of but one in a thousand penmen, the 
ability to write pleasing or appealing verse, and 
therefore they chose him as the poet of the class. 
The closing lines of his poem were : 

"Where'er afar the beck of fate shall call us, 
'Mid winter's boreal chill or summer's blaze, » 

Fond memory's chain of flowers shall still enthrall us, 
Wreathed by the spirits of these vanished days. 



Early Years 

Our hearts shall bear them safe through life's com- 
motion, 
Their fading gleam shall light us to our graves; 
As in the shell the memories of ocean 
Murmur forever of the sounding waves." 

The title he gave it was "Erato: a Poem." 
It was 436 lines in length and was published in 
pamphlet form, but was never included by him 
in his collected poems. 

Of this address to his class Howells wrote 
forty-seven years later : "To say it was a class 
poem is sufficiently to characterise it, perhaps; 
and to add that it was easily better than most 
class poems is not to praise it overmuch. 
There was the graceful handling of a familiar 
measure, and the easy mastery of the forms 
which a young writer's reading makes his sec- 
ond nature; but it was more than commonly 
representative of the poet's own thinking and 
feeling. There was a security of touch in it, 
though there was not yet the maturity which 
early characterised his prose, and which is pres- 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

ent in such marked degree in his paper on Ells- 
worth, the young captain of Zouaves who fell 
in the first months of the Civil War." 

To his personal characteristics in college 
tributes have been given by one and another of 
his twenty-eight classmates. One remembers 
him as "a comely young man with a peach 
bloom face, quiet and reserved, with a thought- 
ful temperament, yet frank, manly, open- 
hearted, and a most delightful companion, de- 
siring, as in his own words, 'to make all good 
men his well wishers that some may grow into 
friends, who are the sunshine of life.' " ^ An- 
other recalls his "singularly modest and retir- 
ing disposition; but withal of so winning a 
manner that no one could be in his presence, 
even for a few moments, without falling under 
the spell which his conversation and companion- 
ship invariably cast upon all who came within 
its influence. He was, indeed, to his little circle 

4 Harry T. Dorner. 



Early Years 

of intimates, a young Dr. Johnson without his 
boorishness, or a Dr. Goldsmith without his 
frivolity." ^ 

Another^ remembers that "he took rank at 
once among the brightest boys in college, and 
maintained it with a degree of ease that was the 
envy of his classmates. In those days all text 
was memorised, and it was the general opinion 
that Hay put his books under his pillow and 
had the contents thereof absorbed and digested 
by morning, for he was never seen 'digging,' or 
doing any other act or thing that could be con- 
strued into hard study. His quick perception, 
ready grasp of an idea, and wonderfully reten- 
tive memory made a mere pastime of study." 
Still another ^ pays tribute to his genial disposi- 
tion manifested as an "impromptu poet and 
punster, full of rollicking fun. He was the life 
of social occasions, and his company was in 

6 William L. Stone. 

6 Norris of '57, a townsman of Hay's. 

7 A. S. Chapman in Century, 78, 450. 

-c 17 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

great demand. Yet it was between college and 
public life that his friends perceived in him an 
undercurrent of religious feeling, and he ap- 
pears to have debated the subject of studying 
for the ministry. When his family wished him 
to take up the study of law he said to a friend, 
'They would spoil a first-class preacher to make 
a third-class lawyer of me.' " 

Another valuable tribute from a living class- 
mate ^ says : "When John Hay entered college 
he was not far from seventeen years of age. 
He had rosy cheeks, keen dark eyes deeply set, 
long auburn hair cut off squarely around his 
neck, and a well developed head upon a slender 
body; he was about five feet five inches in 
height. His voice had no nasal twang but was 
rich and musical, while his speech and de- 
meanour betrayed the child of a home of refine- 
ment. He made no haste to form acquaint- 
ances and seemed shy and reserved while keenly 

s Solon W. Stevens. 

-c 18 ^ 



Early Years 

observant of the manners of others. We all 
learned to respect and admire him, and in the 
course of time, in some instances, acquaintance 
ripened into close friendship. In his student 
days, John Hay was not an ideal, patient, per- 
sistent college grind ; he did not need to be, for 
nature was lavish with her gifts at his birth. 
He was a genius, not erratic, but well poised 
and balanced. He could grasp and retain the 
substance of a lecture or lesson with ease. His 
mind was like a sponge, absorbing everything at 
the touch, but the matter could not be squeezed 
out unless he was willing to let it go. He 
cared but little for college honours, and was 
no contestant for prizes. He was not particu- 
larly brilliant in Greek and Latin classics, and 
was indifferently fond of mathematics. In the 
rhetoric courses and along the lines of English 
Literature he was easily the leader of the class. 
Professor James B. Angell records that 'his 
type of mind was one of great modesty and of 

-C 19 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

marked brilliancy. I used to say he was the 
best translator I ever had in my class, having 
extraordinary mastery of the best vocabulary in 
our tongue, which gives such a charm to all the 
writings of his maturer life and was easily dis- 
cernible even then.' He had a poet's tempera- 
ment, often buoyant, jocular, and witty, and 
often despondent and sad. In company with a 
group of congenial spirits he was jolly, com- 
panionable, sometimes satirical and always the 
best of story-tellers, but back of this there was 
a pathos in his nature which found relief only 
in felicitous phrases of tenderness and affection. 
He had the gift of expression, and when he had 
something to say he said it as a fascinating 
talker, graceful writer, and charming poet. 
He was not universally popular with his mates 
and was familiar with only a few. He was 
prone to be reticent, exclusive, and shy, but the 
few who were made happy by his confidence 
were held in the bonds of the strongest, manly 

^: ^0 > 



Early Years 

friendship. He was admired for his genius, 
and loved for his nobility of character." 

The following list of the class of 1858 as 
printed in the catalogue of that year is of inter- 
est as containing well known and remembered 
names : 

Samuel W. Abbott, Roland F. Alger, C. Ed- 
win Barrows, Robert B. Chapman, Edward P. 
Chase, Edward L. Clark, E. Washburn Coy, 
James F. De Camp, Howard M. Emerson, J. 
Henry Gilmore, Robert I. Goddard, Merrick 
Goldthwait, Arnold Green, Edward M. Gushee, 
Samuel T. Harris, John M. Hay, Leander C. 
Manchester, Francis Mansfield, Aaron H. Nel- 
son, Walter B. Noyes, Joseph H. Patten, Wil- 
liam B. Phillips, Henry G. Safford, Samuel G. 
Silliman, J. Lippitt Snow, Solon W. Stevens, 
William L. Stone, Lyman B. Teft, Samuel 
Thurber. Hay dropped the Milton from his 
name later. 

In the lists of the other classes are names of 
-C 21 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

men who became eminent in various occupa- 
tions, and who in the days when the entire body 
of students numbered only two hundred must 
have been better acquainted with their instruc- 
tors and one another than is now possible. 

Before dismissing college matters it may be 
added that academic honors awaited John Hay 
in the degree of Doctor of Laws conferred by 
Western Reserve in 1894, Brown in 1897, 
Princeton in 1901, Yale in the same year, and 
by Harvard in 1902, for reasons that will be 
apparent later in his career. 



-C 22 > 



II 

FORMATIVE INFLUENCES 

After graduation John Hay took up the study 
of law with the uncle who had sent him to col- 
lege then living in Springfield. In three years 
he had completed his studies and was admitted 
to the bar in 1861. Meantime an influence had 
been encompassing him in the midst of his 
preparation for legal pursuits which was to turn 
him away from them and give another direction 
to his life. 

Milton Hay's office adjoined that of the firm 
of Lincoln and Herndon. There were many 
spare hours in the days before Abraham Lin- 
coln had attained eminence at the bar, and there 
was considerable going back and forth between 
the two offices. Besides, Lincoln gave up 
many evenings to instructing the younger man 

-C 23 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

with whom he had established cordial relations. 
His shrewd judgment of character discerned 
elements that were not needed in the practice of 
provincial courts. Moreover, he himself was 
getting involved in the discussion with Stephen 
A. Douglas of large issues which were going to 
divide the nation. Hay heard something of 
them in the law offices and more on platforms 
here and there throughout the State. In the 
last year of Hay's law studies, i860, Lincoln 
was nominated to the Presidency and his young 
friend of twenty- two threw himself into the 
campaign with the devotion which came from 
personal attachment and belief in qualities 
which had not yet been revealed even to party 
leaders so clearly as to himself in the intimacy 
of daily converse. And when Lincoln was 
elected to the highest position of responsibility 
in a time of political uncertainty he took with 
him, as one of two who should be his most in- 
timate and confidential associates and private 

-C 24 > 



Formative Influences 

secretaries, the young friend and companion of 
the three previous years. The other was John 
G. Nicolay, proprietor and editor of the Pitts- 
field Free Press, who had rendered important 
political services in the campaign. 

For the first few months after class day 
memories of college life will linger like the 
strains of a favourite song just finished. John 
Hay had delivered his class poem and had gone 
home not to return to Commencement, then held 
in September. Between the jollity of academic 
days and the sober work that was before him it 
was not strange that the versifying habit lin- 
gered on, and that the spirit of youth should per- 
vade it. And what themes could be nearer 
than the stories of river and plain, of the heroes 
of sand-bars and whisky-bars^ They would 
be as attractive to the tame East as a Wild West 
show to a New England schoolboy, and the 
River States would recognise their own children. 
Therefore when the recent graduate as was his 

•C 25 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

wont strolled along the banks and over the 
bluffs of the wide river or over the broader 
prairie he took what was nearest him, the pilot, 
and the squatter, the" veteran of Vicksburg, 
Colonel Blood and old Judge Phinn, each intent 
upon the same "whisky-skin." 

There was a homespun belief in Providence 
in one, a martyr's sacrifice in another, a stand 
for race freedom in another, and for personal 
rights — as they understood them — in two more 
and border promptness in their defence accord- 
ing to the primitive law of the land and custom 
of the day and country. The six short poems ^ 
taken together constitute a moving picture of 
frontier life which has been attractive not only 
to boys with cowboy dreams of it but to their 
elders as well, and even to cultivated Europeans. 
When long years afterward Hay appeared in 
London his chief interest to men of letters was 

1 "Golyer" and "The Pledge at Spunky Point" were added 
after the first edition of 1871. 

-c 26 :>- 



i 



Formative Influences 

as the author of distinctively American verse, 
since they chose to connect it with the wild 
flavour and grotesque wit which they had been 
accustomed to associate with everything in the 
new land since the Puritan Period. Nothing 
else that Hay had done was so pleasing in their 
sight. The Academy quoted with enthusiasm 
"Jim Bludso" and "Little Breeches" but forgot 
to mention the monumental Biography of Lin- 
coln; and the Spectator discovered nothing 
greater than the representative of American 
humour and its audacious imagination. So of 
other British critics who hailed Bret Harte's 
"Heathen Chinee," "The Outcasts of Poker 
Flat," and "The Luck of Roaring Camp," as 
representing Yankee life and literature; which 
in the decade subsequent to Hay's "Ballads" 
had moved a little westward, from the Mis- 
sissippi River to the Pacific, only two thou- 
sand miles. But what matter to British com- 
prehension of our national growth since 

-C 27 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

the war of 1812 when it saw the last of us? 

It was once said that after his later literary 
achievement and his residence abroad Hay him- 
self became ashamed of these windfalls. On 
the contrary as late as 1903 he remarked to a 
friend, George Gary Eggleston, "that he was 
prouder of that very human verse than of any- 
thing else he had ever done." ^ As to the pri- 
ority of Hay's Ballads over Harte's, Mark 
Twain took pains to settle the question in 1905, 
when he wrote: 

"Mr. Hay told me in 1870 or '71 that they 
were written and printed in back country 
papers, before Harte's.^ When his began to 
sweep the country the noise woke Hay's buried 
waifs and they rose and walked." Harte thus 
advertised Hay better than he could do it him- 

^ Current Literature 39: 132. 

3 Osgood published the Ballads in the spring of 1871 col- 
lected from various periodicals. Century 70: 792. The 
"Heathen Chinee" was published in the Overland Monthly 
in Aug. 1870. A few months later the Ballads appeared. 

-C 28 3- 



Formative Influences 

self. Hay was not pleased to be called an imi- 
tator of his successor in ballad writing.^ It is 
one of the uncertainties of contemporary testi- 
mony that Clemens in the article of which the 
preceding is a fragment said, that it was true 
that in later life Hay wished people to forget the 
Ballads. If this is true it may be another paral- 
lel instance of regrets that early products survive 
to the injury of later achievement, as in the case 
of eminent writers who have begun as humour- 
ists; Harte himself being an example whose 
"Heathen Chinee" was fished out of a waste 
basket one day when there was an insistent de- 
mand for "copy" and nothing else to meet it. 
It made louder calls for more, which higher 
verse could not drown. So he wrote the ''Out- 
casts," the ''Luck," and the rest of mining-camp 
ballads until England absorbed him as the poet 
of native Americanism, and considered that 
classic verse was the prerogative of Great 

^Harper*s Weekly, Oct 21, 1905. 

-C 29 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

Britain. Of both Hay and Harte, and perhaps 
Lowell, it was true that they could furnish di- 
verse wares but could not control the market; 
and that there is no accounting for tastes except 
by the freaks that seize upon the best regulated 
minds as a relief from their constant regulation, 
a cropping out of aboriginal instincts and a re- 
version to primitive type. Whatever both these 
pioneer poets of the frontier may have thought 
of their wild whimsies in maturer years they 
were started by them on other lines more satis- 
factory to themselves if less amusing to others. 

Hay soon found that he had a reputation 
which he must live up to, but not in the man- 
ner of Pike County. In the entrance upon a 
larger life with President Lincoln his outlook be- 
came suddenly national and cosmopolitan, and 
so did his verse. He had written his "Prairie," 
the last of the kind, three years before — unless 
the two additional ballads be included. Then 
must have followed "Crows at Washington," 

-C 30 > 



Formative Influences 

"The Advance Guard," "Liberty," "When the 
Boys Come Home," "Northward," "God's 
Vengeance," "Guy of the Temple," — war songs 
in as many moods, inspired by what he saw in 
camp and field. They were a notable advance 
from the Ballads and symbolic of the change 
tliat new associations had wrought in an im- 
pressionable spirit. 

The significance of these associations and the 
removal from a law office to the executive man- 
sion would be great to a young man of twenty- 
three at any time, but there were features of this 
transfer that had more than common impor- 
tance. The prospect in his Illinois home was 
for nothing better than slow arrival at such suc- 
cess as his uncle had attained in the local court 
of a country town. Even the office of Lincoln 
and Herndon was not so crowded with clients 
that there was no time to talk politics and tell a 
story. But the tidal wave of Northern senti- 
ment about the great issue of the century which 

-C 31 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

had been rising for forty years swept around 
that office and carried one of its occupants to the 
Capitol to be a nation's leader in the critical 
period of its existence. Its life was as uncer- 
tain as that of the new leader on his guarded 
way to Washington. Nor was he insensible of 
the sudden elevation which had come to him in 
the call to the throne, so far as there was a 
throne in a great republic. His farewell to his 
townsmen as he spoke to them from his car at 
the then dingy station was his last farewell as 
he passed to immortal fame. 

What occurred to the country lawyer and 
politician happened in a degree proportioned to 
his age and experience to the young man he took 
with him. He too was to be at the nerve centre 
of the nation in its fever and delirium ; to know 
something of its statesmen, its chieftains, its sol- 
diery; its policy, its business, its diplomacy. 
How far beyond the little opportunities of his 
Sangamon County! It was the year of 



Formative Influences 

Europe, worth a cycle of Cathay. But better 
than this was the opportunity of daily converse 
with the man who was growing in wisdom and 
strength and fortitude with the weeks and 
months of thought and suffering. The 
processes by which one conclusion after another 
was reached and one step after another taken 
could not have escaped Hay's observation. 
Nor could the foresight, self-control, and pa- 
tience of his chief and the nation's be unknown 
to the intimate friend of Lincoln. 

It was a great opportunity for a recent gradu- 
ate. His early duties were monotonous and 
tiresome as an amanuensis and copyist, but the 
papers he transcribed were in some instances 
material for future historians and must have 
been a part of his own education for the larger 
career which was before him. Nevertheless he 
had fond memories of his old home in those 
first weeks and wrote to a townsman who had 
spoken of the dulness of Warsaw: "Warsaw 

< 33 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

dull? It shines before my eyes like a social 
paradise compared with this miserable sprawl- 
ing village [of Washington] which imagines it- 
self a city because it is wicked, as a boy thinks 
he is a man when he smokes and swears. I 
wish I could by wishing find myself in War- 
saw. ... I never before was so anxious to see 
it or so reluctant to leave it. It is a good thing 
to go home. I seem to take on a new lease of 
life, to renew a fast fleeting youth on the breezy 
hills of my home. I feel like doing a mar- 
vellous amount of work when I return, and the 
dull routine of every-day labour is charmingly 
relieved by vanishing visions of grand rivers, 
green hills, and willowy islands that float in be- 
tween me and my paper. And sometimes the 
pen will drop from tired hands and the desk 
will disappear and the annoyances of the chan- 
cery court will be forgotten in dreams of happy 
days in the old home, lit with eyes and melodi- 

•C 34 > 



Formative Influences 

ous with the voices of those who are and ever 

have been 

A' the world to me — 

You know the rest." 

It is not easy to understand this attack of 
homesickness in a young man who had been 
away from home during three academic years 
unless there was an unmentioned object of at- 
tachment alluded to in the last four words. 
But this must be left between the two friends. 

A junior secretary would be likely to have 
laborious days in the early years of the war 
when business was of many kinds at the execu- 
tive mansion. No doubt there is enough to do 
in peaceful times, but an active and increasing 
army brought its cares and correspondence to 
the commander-in-chief and his ofBcial assist- 
ants as well as to the Secretary of War. More- 
over, the President had need of information di- 
rect from one quarter and another which had 

-C 35 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

not been coloured by media through which it 
had passed on its way to Washington and to 
send messages without their falling into hostile 
hands. He must have a confidential friend in 
the field. The one he knew best and could trust 
most was at his elbow. Accordingly John Hay 
received the title of Colonel on General Hun- 
ter's staff and was in the field on special serv- 
ice, although remaining an assistant secretary 
until the President's assassination. He thus 
came to have an intimate acquaintance with the 
entire situation at the Capitol and in every part 
of the country better than any other man of his 
years in all the land. 

Later, at Stanton's suggestion, Lincoln ap- 
pointed Hay an assistant adjutant general, and 
he served in that capacity for some time in the 
field. On one occasion he was sent on a mission 
which had its embarrassing features, however it 
should result. 

Horace Greeley in the summer of 1864 de- 
-C 36 > 



Formative Influences 

cided that he could end the war if he could 
negotiate peace with Southern emissaries who 
were in Canada, and worried the President into 
appointing him as a sort of envoy extraordinary, 
against his judgment but for politic reasons. 
With him, however, he sent Hay as his own 
representative to Niagara where the conference 
was to be held. It turned out as Lincoln antic- 
ipated, a fool's errand on Greeley's part, who 
would have preferred to be sole witness of his 
own failure. It was years before he forgave 
Hay his companionship. If peace had been 
made on the terms Greeley was willing to offer 
or to accept both he and Hay would have re- 
ceived the malediction of the entire North. 
Greeley may have recalled this fiasco in subse- 
quent years when his presidential aspirations 
were dampened; but Hay does not appear to 
have suffered, doubtless because of his repre- 
senting an unwilling executive who had no 
sympathy with the great editor's compromising 

-C 37 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

scheme, a man whose newspaper ability far ex- 
ceeded his statesmanship. 

Recognition of Hay's worth during his four 
years' association with Lincoln had not been 
confined to the President. As Secretary of 
State, Seward had seen much of the young 
messenger who had won his elder's kindly re- 
gard and sincere respect. Accordingly after 
the war was over he sent for him and offered 
him a place in the Legation at Paris which hap- 
pened to be vacant. It was an opportunity to 
see a larger world and international business. 
Before he could take his departure from the 
man who had been as a father to him the 
companionship of seven years at home and in 
Washington was abruptly ended by the assas- 
sin's bullet. 

Hay and Robert Lincoln were chatting in 
one of the rooms of the White House on the 
fatal Friday night. As soon as they heard the 
sad tidings they hurried to the house opposite 

-C 38 > 



Formative Influences ' 

Ford's Theatre where the President had been 
carried and were in the room when he died. 
Next to the calamity to the son was the weight 
of it to the young man who had been as a son 
to Abraham Lincoln. He had lost his best 
friend and counsellor; also his position with 
the change in administration. It was fortu- 
nate that the Department of State had provided 
for him. 

It is impossible to overestimate the value 
of the years with President Lincoln to the 
young man of his choice. He saw what was 
hidden from many under a drollery assumed to 
cover heaviness of heart. The depths of its 
anxiety and gloom were known to the compan- 
ion of wakeful hours. His vision of an hon- 
est mind and compassionate heart was clear and 
the impress of a great soul moulded the life 
that was to carry out the principles and pur- 
poses of his foster-father. 

The Legation at Paris was Hay's primary 
< 39 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

school in diplomacy for two years, in which 
time he also acquired a speaking knowledge of 
the French language as a medium of inter- 
national communication. They were years of 
study in many branches. When he returned 
home Seward's eyes were still upon him and 
the estimate of his fitness for a foreign post 
so high that he sent in his name as Minister 
to Sweden ; but Johnson, who had turned Dem- 
ocrat, had uses for all vacancies. There was 
one at Vienna, however, in the gift of the 
Secretary of State and thither Hay was sent as 
charge d'affaires. It was a third-class mission, 
to be sure, but it was the next step in an or- 
derly progress toward better positions. The 
city itself was an admirable place in which to 
study diplomacy. Notable treaties had been 
concluded there and important questions set- 
tled, as between Charles VI and the Infanta 
of Spain concerning the kingdom of the two 
Sicilies; between Napoleon and the Austrians 

< 40 > 



Formative Influences 

after their defeat at Wagram; the Great Con- 
gress of Vienna met to order the affairs of Eu- 
rope after Napoleon's overthrow and to restore 
to each kingdom such a share of power as each 
could get in the redistribution after the Cor- 
sican's disturbance of the diplomatic game. 
These are but a fraction of the conferences 
which have been held in the Austrian capital — 
a modern city upon ancient foundations — the 
history of which would be an education in 
diplomatic art; as its industries, its galleries, 
its museums, its university founded in the four- 
teenth century, a public hospital — the largest 
in Europe — are all so many educational influ- 
ences to an open mind. What they were to 
this young man of twenty-five, holding a place 
that commanded entrance to everything worth 
his while, can best be understood by those who 
have occupied similar positions in their early 
manhood. Something can be gathered from 
the successive portraits that were secured from 

-C 41 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

time to time and have been reproduced. Each 
one shows an added experience of more than 
common advantages, of which the continuous 
phase is a serene self-command and the knowl- 
edge of large affairs. 

After two years in Austria he was trans- 
ferred to Spain in 1869. It was not a promo- 
tion, but the change brought new opportuni- 
ties and those attractions which have appealed 
to one and another of the cultivated representa- 
tives of the nation from Irving onward to 
Hardy. To each one there have been new 
features to portray and new scenes to depict. 
They have not been discouraged by the "Al- 
hambra" and its early successors. Hay him- 
self with his love of letters and delight in com- 
position could not resist the inspiration of 
Spain's scenery and history, its social and po- 
litical life. Its art and its architecture, its 
palaces and cottages, its castles on mountains 
and in the air, its halls and its homes, its cities 

*C 42 > 



Formative Influences 

and villages, its nobles and peasants, all had 
their charm for him. Therefore when spring 
blossomed he began to write a series of articles 
for the Atlantic Monthly^ which were published 
in a book five years later, now known as "Cas- 
tilian Days." It was the evening pastime of 
a ready writer, noting the high lights of the 
present with its unchanging inheritances from 
the past. The old had for him the interest of 
the new because there had been nothing like 
it in France or Austria. Madrid he found 
more cosmopolitan than the rest of the penin- 
sula, since every province was represented and 
every government had its official at the capi- 
tal; but aside from politics and public affairs 
a family and social life not over-strenuous had 
their pleasant contrasts to the laborious haste 
of American days and nights. Nobody was in 
a hurry and there was always time for a nap 
and a cigar. Frugality permitted leisure, and 
idleness was to all better than wages earned, 

-C 43 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

unless in a government position on five hundred 
a year. 

The most noticeable characteristic of the 
nation, pervading all its provinces and hab- 
its of life, he found to be its changeless conform- 
ity to ancient custom. The people live and act 
according to the traditions that have been main- 
tained for centuries. It matters not if the rea- 
sons for doing something and for the particular 
way of doing it have been superseded by bet- 
ter things and ways beyond the Pyrenees or 
over-sea; this is the only procedure in the Pen- 
insula because it was the only one in the Dark 
Ages. The watchman called the hours and 
let in residents at his convenience in the days 
of Charles the Sixth and Philip the Third, 
therefore he continues to make neighbours wait 
their turn in his inconsequential absence and 
no complaint is made. A contractor from Eng- 
land brought wheelbarrows with him: the men 
poised them on their heads, twirled the wheels 



Formative Influences 

a while and then went for their baskets to carry 
sand as their ancestors had for a thousand years. 
Mules are driven tandem through the streets 
because ages ago these were narrow. The 
Spaniard's signature is the flourish at the end 
of it, a fashion dating from the time when he 
could write nothing more. When a hundred 
years since some people who had seen cleaner 
cities tried to have Madrid deodourised, the 
savants of the city reported that the air from 
the mountains was so clear that it needed the 
admixture of reeking streets to fit it for human 
breathing. It is probable that they would 
have missed the indoor savour of their homes; 
for as the heathen Moors washed daily a Chris- 
tian ought to bathe next to never. So when 
the cleanly infidels were driven out of Granada 
the abominations of the public baths were de- 
stroyed. Highborn ladies preferred to varnish 
their countenances with the white of an egg to 
washing them. These are instances of con- 

<^5> 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

servatism which belong to externals. A deeper 
conformity to belief and ceremony held the 
nation in a grasp as unflinching as its instru- 
ments of the Inquisition. In Church and State 
there was the same looking backward. The 
King stuck to his precedents and the clergy to 
their ceremonies and both held together against 
heretics as the fathers had. There was no new 
thing in all the land. An unquestioning cre- 
dulity and blind service were all. Out of these 
sprung the honour that did not mean honesty 
even but only fidelity to king and priest. Vir- 
tue was a thing of expediency. Self-conceit 
and readiness to quarrel on any occasion com- 
pleted the Spaniard's outfit. He could live on 
his pride and the Church would save his soul 
if he left it to her and her bidding, asking no 
questions. If he did not do it another pro- 
vision would be made for him in a damp or 
very dry place, by rack or fire. Philip the Sec- 
ond and his monks had a dance of death to- 

-c 46 :^ 



Formative Influences 

gether for ten years when 40,000 were killed, 
but not a heretic remained. Yet his people 
loved Philip and upheld him. 

This tradition of royal supremacy and 
priestly authority Hay thought would lose its 
grip upon the nation, but it still has the under- 
hold. Politics has a better hope. 

Other features of Spanish life had a passing 
interest for him, mingled with revulsion some- 
times, as at bull fights. He found the feast- 
days of the saints and the idle days of the peo- 
ple a pleasant contrast to the strenuous life he 
had left at home, and the simple enjoyments 
of the populace full of colour and merriment. 
Higher diversion awaits those who gather the 
harvest of art in the matchless galleries of 
Madrid and Seville, whose inheritance de- 
scended from the days when a flood of gold 
swept art treasures from all sides to remain 
long after the gold had vanished. The great- 
est collection in the world, it cannot be sur- 

-C 47 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

passed until it is itself broken up. It is equally- 
great in the eminence of the masters who have 
contributed to its wealth. Raphael, Rubens, 
Titian, Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, Valasquez, 
and Murillo have left their legacies here, the 
single oasis in a desert of gloomy memories and 
an island in a sea of blood. 

After art, architecture left its unworldly im- 
pressions linked with the higher reaches of faith 
and hope, as the cathedral of Toledo, or with 
denials, as the unadorned Escorial, built amid 
the desolation of a cinder field. The Miracle 
Play called him back to the Middle Ages and 
primitive instruction; the proverbs of an un- 
lettered folk were the homely wisdom that had 
grown in nutshells for ages, but not largely in 
the nation's literature. Cervantes secured a 
pilgrimage to Alcala one summer day, the home 
of Ximenez' great university with its eleven 
thousand students in the sixteenth century, and 
what is of more consequence, the birthplace of 

-C 48 > 



Formative Influences 

the author of ''Don Quixote," where a tired 
old man, living upon a crust tossed to him by 
one Don Lemos in this garret and that, wrote 
the one book that stands for Spanish literature 
for most readers and then left a weary world 
with Shakespeare on the 23d of April, 1616. 

In the closing chapters the author comes 
down from Spain's lugubrious past to observe 
its legislature in 1870 and contrast it with the 
way it used to be governed by monk and mon- 
arch. It was a field-night when there was to 
be some oratory and more talk over a bill 
"of the character which your true Spaniard 
loathes and scorns. It is a bill for raising 
money. Of course a parliament of office-hold- 
ers recognise the necessity of the treasury be- 
ing filled. But they usually prefer to let the 
Finance Minister have his own way about fill- 
ing it, theirs being the more seductive task of 
emptying it. So that financial matters are 
usually discussed in the inspiring presence of 

-C 49 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

empty benches. But to-night every available 
man is in his place. The government is greatly 
alarmed in regard to the passage of the bill." 

The air of antiquity which hangs about 
everything Spanish is found in its modern as- 
sembly when "Ruiz Gomez, evidently fresh 
from the reading of a Congressional Globe of 
thirty or forty years ago, rebuked Mr. Castelar 
for his apathy in financial matters, informing 
him that to-day, in the United States, Adams, 
Jackson, Clay, and Madison are much more in- 
terested in questions of tariff and slavery com- 
promise than in Michael Angelo and the Par- 
thenon!" One can imagine the difficulties be- 
setting the American Legation in dealing with 
such a government in 1870 and later. But its 
retrospective habit, like the customs of the peo- 
ple, furnished endless amusement to a man 
whose sense of humour was as keen as Mr. 
Hay's, as his own expression of it affords con- 
tinual and delightful surprises to his reader, 

-C 50 > 



Formative Influences 

breaking out as the story runs on like flashes 
along an electric trolley-wire. Of an energetic 
gesticulator in this debate who was hammering 
a mahogany table he said, that the Ministry 
yielded to his argument — to save the furniture. 
He has a few informative sentences on the 
absence of conscience in political Spain. Not 
only will evil be done that good may come but 
infamies will be committed to attain equally 
infamous ends. To dissimulate is wisdom, can- 
dour is folly, and to speak what is in one's 
mind is idiocy. Insincere themselves, they ex- 
pect falsehood from others. A Spanish Minis- 
ter was disgraced for believing John Tyler 
telling the truth in the interest of Spain and 
slavery. The wiseacres of Madrid were confi- 
dent that he wanted to steal Cuba. In dis- 
charging obligations also the American has an 
opinion of the nation that must have reminded 
him of an occasional acquaintance at home. 
"They will at first deny the debt, they will 

-C 51 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

next make an argument on the law, and they 
will end by silence and shameless delay. The 
bayonet is not always a sufficient persuader. 
They would often rather fight than pay." 
With a dishonest government robbing them at 
every turn the people take care that it shall 
get as little as possible, and he is greatest 
among them who can smuggle best. So with 
lack of principle in rulers and of faith in the 
masses, the political life of the nation stagnates, 
while its religious life was paralysed by the axe 
and rack of the sixteenth century. It will be 
long in recovering. 

With a chapter on the Necessity of the Re- 
public closes a most interesting book upon 
Spain. It has the deliberation that cannot be 
looked for in a tourist hurrying from city to 
city. The author living among the people, ac- 
credited by his own government, saw phases of 
society and aspects of diplomacy which the 
traveller would be obliged to pass over. Be- 

-C 52 > 



Formative Influences 

sides, the story is told with fairness to the na- 
tion's past and fidelity to what was its present 
forty-four years ago. It is good literature as 
well as faithful description. 



< S3> 



Ill 

LITERARY LABOURS 

In 1870 Mr. Hay resigned his place with the 
Spanish Legation and sailed for New York. 
Whitelaw Reid, who had been a war corre- 
spondent in Hay's Washington days, had risen 
to become managing editor of the Tribune. 
He knew of his friend's expected arrival and 
meeting him at the landing took him to the 
Union League Club to dine. There he must 
have learned of Hay's purpose to practise law 
in Illinois. If he had other plans for his 
friend he was not likely to announce them then 
and there. He proposed an after-dinner stroll 
down to the Tribune office. Looking over the 
telegrams he found an important despatch. 
The foreign editor happened to be away and 
he turned to Hay and said, "Sit down and write 

-C 54 > 



Literary Labours 

a leader on this for to-morrow." He could not 
well refuse. The article was good enough to 
pass with Horace Greeley, his adversary out 
of the Canadian episode of six years before. 
Mr. Reid asked him to stay a week, a month, 
and then to be one of the editors. And so Mr. 
Hay was diverted from his home and law to 
New York and journalism. The place came to 
him without seeking when he had other pur- 
poses. He kept it when there was the editor- 
in-chief s antagonism to overcome. He con- 
quered by the excellence of his work and held 
Mr. Greeley's friendship till the day of the lat- 
ter's death. He used to say that Hay was the 
most brilliant writer who had ever entered the 
office. For the benefit of all brilliants, recall- 
ing Greeley, it should be added that his manu- 
script was a model of neatness and legibility. 

The appointment on the Tribune staff of a 
man without the experience by which such a po- 
sition is obtained was a testimony to singular 

< 5S> 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

ability. It could not be a warrant of success 
that he had lived at the White House or in for- 
eign courts. Nor is journalism a matter of 
verse or description. In Hay's instance it 
was a phase of the versatile talent which could 
be employed in many directions with similar 
success. Already it appeared as if his achieve- 
ment was to be in the field of literature, despite 
the practical affairs of daily life and the prob- 
lems of politics which demanded his attention in 
newspaper work. 

It is probable at that time that he regarded 
the opportunities of journalism which were of- 
fered him in 1870 as of more value than any 
literary openings presented. Horace Greeley 
had made his paper a great power in the North. 
Thousands of people had waited for the daily 
or weekly Tryhune^ as they called it, not only 
for information but for their opinions on pub- 
lic affairs. Its circulation was immense, its in- 
fluence powerful during the war years. But 

-C 56 > 



Literary Labours 

when Hay joined the staff there was need of 
fresh forces to hold the paper to its traditions. 
Greeley was looking for the presidential prize 
at the hands of the Democratic party, and in 
1872 received the nomination in opposition to 
General Grant, but failed of election, and died 
in November of that year. The Tribune had 
an opportunity to recover its standing under the 
surviving management, who saw not only its 
privilege but the need of improving it. 

To John Hay his five years of service afforded 
the means of acquaintance with the leading men 
of the time. Everything worth knowing came 
into the ear of the nation hour after hour; its 
ruling ideas and characters were weighed and 
values were assigned with the fearlessness that 
impersonality gives. And yet the performance 
of the anonymous writer also was known by 
those who were behind the screens, and some- 
times by outsiders, who managed to convey 
their appreciation to the secluded penman. 

-C 57 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

He soon became recognised as a brilliant edi- 
tor and secured a wide and influential acquaint- 
ance among the men who had come into promi- 
nence since the war. Statesmen, diplomatists, 
jurists, scientific men, and authors — representa- 
tives of all classes that have a word with the 
public through the press — came into his field of 
observation from the right side and the wrong 
side, affording views not always intended. 

In the last year of Mr. Hay's connection 
with the Tribune^ 1875, ^^ married Miss Stone, 
the daughter of Mr. Amasa Stone, a man of 
wealth in Cleveland, Ohio. The following 
year he removed to Ohio, where he engaged in 
business. This was another change of occupa- 
tion, this time in a direction which he would 
not have chosen as the line of least resistance, 
but his usual adaptability served him and the 
interests intrusted to him for four years. Dur- 
ing this period of waiting for something suited 
to his capacities he made the acquaintance of a 

-C 58 > 



Literary Labours 

group of men who made Ohio a ruling State 
in the Union. Garfield, Hayes, McKinley, 
Hanna, and others were friends worth having, 
who would not be likely to overlook merit be- 
cause it was modest when the day for its recog- 
nition should arrive. Mr. Hayes was the first 
to reach the presidential chair and chose Mr. 
Evarts as his Secretary of State, who had Fred- 
erick Seward as his assistant until failing health 
compelled his resignation. 

In looking for a successor it was agreed by 
the principals that John Hay was the one 
man for the place. It was difficult to persuade 
him to accept it. At first he declined, but 
after an interview with Mr. Reid he consented, 
and served the Department of State through- 
out the remainder of Mr. Evarts' term. He 
took lessons in diplomacy at close range, which 
would be useful to him by and by. Possibly 
he was coming on as fast as he wished to. He 
was only thirty-eight; he had no need of the 

< 59> 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

salary; he was well established in Washing- 
ton, where he had built an elegant house; and 
there were others who had made sacrifices for 
the party and expected a share in the distri- 
bution of spoils. If the chief position in 
the Cabinet had fallen to him it would have 
been a recognition of unadulterated worth 
hardly to be expected after the disputed elec- 
tion of 1876, when William M. Evarts was the 
principal counsel for the Republican party be- 
fore the Electoral Commission which decided 
for Hayes instead of Tilden by 185 to 184, al- 
though Tilden's plurality of the popular vote 
was 250,970 over Hayes. 

His successor, Mr. Garfield, desired Mr. 
Hay as a confidential adviser who should not 
be hampered with the responsibilities of of- 
fice in the Cabinet, but should give his coun- 
sel with regard to the duties of the Executive. 
A private secretaryship alone could comprehend 
such service. It did not appeal to Mr. Hay's 

-C 60 > 



Literary Labours 

sense of personal independence in the presiden- 
tial chair, modified by the opinions of the 
Cabinet alone. Garfield had said that he had 
no pride of opinion, and if his Cabinet could 
control him let them do so. At the same time 
he sought for ability in his advisers rather than 
harmony alone among them. 

There was always a call for John Hay on 
the right hand and on the left. It was a ques- 
tion which was the louder. There was no 
doubt which was the more constant and con- 
tinuous. Diplomacy, like all public service, 
was a thing of administrations. If Tilden, for 
instance, had been allowed his popular major- 
ity Hay would not have been appointed a 
Democratic Secretary of State's assistant. 
His ability would have been overlooked. That 
was at the disposal of political fortune and 
our electoral system. Possibly, therefore, he 
regarded his diplomatic talent as Milton did 
his prose — a left-hand accomplishment. At 

-C 61 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

least it was this in the uncertainty of its em- 
ployment, though not in its exercise. 

On the other hand, there was the impulse to 
write. He had known what this was for 
twenty years. For five years he had known its 
most exacting exercise in the demands of a 
daily journal. Accordingly, when the call 
came again from the Tribune office, this time 
to the chair of the editor-in-chief, he knew what 
were the demands of the position, its responsi- 
bilities, and its rewards. For one thing, a sal- 
ary of $5,000, which was considered large at 
the time, but as he had no need of it possibly 
he valued more other compensations of a less 
material nature such as come to the editor of 
a metropolitan journal and have already been 
enumerated in part. Added to these is a 
dictatorship whose influence extends far be- 
yond the office, where a word is dropped 
of suggestion, caution, or direction, to ripple 

-C 62 :}. 



Literary Labours 

out in widening circles over a whole nation. 
Whatever the attractions which journalism 
had for Hay there was always before him one 
great purpose which he had regarded as some- 
thing more than a literary undertaking. It 
could not have been long after the death of 
Lincoln that his foster-son determined to write 
his life, or perhaps it would be more accurate 
to say, that before this it was determined while 
Lincoln was alive that his life should be writ- 
ten by those who were best qualified. He 
could see that many would undertake so promis- 
ing a theme; he knew that no one better than 
himself could present the Lincoln of the Re- 
public. Yet there were circumstances which 
made it advisable that this privilege be shared 
with another in such a way that his work could 
not be identified by an ordinary reader. At 

^ Newspaper work after all was only moderately attractive 
to Mr. Hay. He used to say to younger men that "Journal- 
ism is a good mistress but a bad wife." 

-{;63 3- 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

best it would be an undivided half, of a monu- 
mental tribute, to be sure, but like all collabora- 
tion, with blurred borders and blended masses 
of colour and fabric. Mr. Nicolay might 
naturally have the same consciousness of sur- 
render, but the sacrifice was for both; or rather 
it was made that the friend of both, who had 
taken them with him to be his daily compan- 
ions for four years, should lose nothing that 
either could contribute to a worthy memorial. 
The preface to the ten volumes is a frank decla- 
ration of their joint work. There are separate 
sections written by each, but no key to the dis- 
tribution except such internal evidence as a 
shrewd critic may discover. Every means that 
mutual revision could furnish was applied to 
the text, and every pains taken to prevent the 
reader from saying, Lo, here is Nicolay, and 
Lo, there is Hay. Sometimes the wish must 
have come to both that the credit of so great 
an achievement might fall to one of them, since 

-C 64 > 



Literary Labours 

one-half the labour would have brought either 
more than half the renown. Therefore it is to 
their greater glory that each sank his identity 
in making a composite portrait which is the 
more excellent for the work of both. 

Its publication began as a serial in the Cert' 
tury Magazine in November, 1886, and closed 
early in 1890. The authors said of it: "We 
began to prepare for it in war years and for 
the execution of the plan after return from Eu- 
rope. We have devoted to it almost twenty 
years of almost unremitting assiduity; we have 
aimed to write a sufficiently full and absolutely 
honest history of a great man and a great time, 
and we claim that there is not a line in all 
these volumes dictated by malice or unfair- 
ness. We have derived the greatest advantage 
from the suggestions and corrections which 
have been elicited during the serial publication 
and beg to make our sincere acknowledgments 
to the hundreds of friendly critics who have fur- 

-C 65 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

nished us with valuable information. . . . 
"We knew Mr. Lincoln intimately before 
his election to the Presidency. We came from 
Illinois to Washington with him, and remained 
at his side and in his service — separately or 
together — until the day of his death. His 
correspondence, both official and private, passed 
through our hands; he gave us his full confi- 
dence. We had personal acquaintance and 
daily official intercourse with Cabinet Officers, 
Members of Congress, Governors, and Military 
and Naval Officers of all grades whose affairs 
brought them to the White House. It is with 
the advantage, therefore, of a wide personal 
acquaintance with all the leading participants 
of the war, and of perfect familiarity with the 
manuscript material, and also with the assist- 
ance of the vast bulk of printed records and 
treatises which have accumulated since 1865, 
that we have prosecuted this work to its close. 
"We are aware of the prejudice which ex- 
-C 66 > 



Literary Labours 

ists against a book written by two persons, 
but we feel that in our case the disadvantages 
are reduced to the minimum. Our experiences, 
our observations, our material, have been for 
twenty years not merely homogeneous — they 
have been identical. Our plans were made 
with thorough concert; our studies of the sub- 
ject were carried on together; we were able to 
work simultaneously without danger of repeti- 
tion or conflict. Each has written an equal 
portion of the work; the text of each remains 
substantially unaltered. It is in the fullest 
sense, and in every part a joint work. What- 
ever credit or blame the public may award our 
labours is equally due to both." 

In the history of literature there have been 
many collaborated works, but none more inter- 
esting than this in the association of two young 
men with the greatest man of their time, in the 
most critical period of a nation's life, with the 
early design of writing a monumental biog- 

-C 67 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

raphy, and the constant preparation during ten 
years, and the continuous labour of ten years 
more in writing it. The ten volumes which re- 
sulted are a fitting memorial to their subject 
and a worthy testimonial to their writers. 

It would be gratifying to be able, for the 
present purpose, to attribute them all to Mr. 
Hay, but if his half only had been published the 
world would have said that it was an achieve- 
ment sufficient for the literary renown of any 
biographer. However, it is not a work to be 
estimated by its volume alone. Its quality 
makes it a classic. It was received as such by 
the best criticism at the time of its publication. 
Qualifications had to be found in order to es- 
tablish critical acumen, but they gathered 
around the question of how far history and bio- 
graphy should blend in such a work. In this 
instance it was impossible not to have a back- 
ground of events on which a person who was the 
leading actor in them should be portrayed. 

-C 68 > 



Literary Labours 

And if there were to be reasonable limits to the 
biography of this leader, the liability would be 
extreme to neglect other men who had a large 
share in affairs military and civil. So also other 
writers might have given more space to some 
topics and less to others, to the possible dispro- 
portion of a story which had the judgment of 
two instead of one. Taken all together the 
consensus of opinion pronounced the work a 
most valuable contribution to the historical and 
biographical literature of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. Perhaps the best endorsement of this 
general opinion is the primacy the work con- 
tinues to hold a quarter of a century after its 
publication, when the subject of it has not 
ceased to interest writers, as it probably will not 
for a century to come. It will be a genius, or a 
pair of surpassing ability, who will supplant 
this standard biography. 

In addition to his poems, the "Castilian 
Days," and his half of the "Life of Lincoln" 

<^9> 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

there were waifs and estrays which ought not to 
be overlooked because they were scattered along 
the years. There was the paper on Ellsworth, 
the young captain who fell among the first vic- 
tims of the Civil War, a personal tribute of the 
kind which admiring friendship can give with 
justice amidst the restraint and reserve of grief. 
"The Mormon Prophet's Tragedy" belongs to 
the frontier life which so many have attempted 
to depict and so few have faithfully portrayed, 
but which is delineated with masterly accuracy 
by one whose sympathies were with his people 
of the plains. Then there was "The Breadwin- 
ners," which met with exceptional success, but 
was never acknowledged by him nor yet posi- 
tively denied, his first and last venture in fiction 
— an early note of the coming springtime of so- 
cial betterment, or a herald voice of trial by 
combat between forces now mustering. 

In all these adventures with pen and ink he 
gave proof in diverse ways that if he had chosen 

•C 70 > 



Literary Labours 

authorship as a sole profession he would have 
attained an eminence of which his friends would 
have been proud. As it was, he seemed in sev- 
eral periods to be looking with interest at the 
hand which pointed down the Writers' Road, 
and to be contemplating the delights of creative 
work, of undisturbed occupation, and even of 
modified gratification in reflections which criti- 
cism produces, like a prism with greater or less 
divergence by refraction. For those who are 
pleased with his verse, or diverted by his essays, 
or above all absorbed in the chapters of his 
tribute to Lincoln there will always be regrets 
that the heritage of his production was not 
greater, that the best of what he did leave is 
practically anonymous; and that if it should 
ever be otherwise the water-mark of partner- 
ship must be stamped upon it by his own choice. 
More books, however, there could not be, be- 
cause as he looked down the path of Literature 
there was another on the other hand marked Di- 

-C 71 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

plomacy. He was not strongly inclined to take 
it; he certainly did not seek it for its emolu- 
ments. It seemed rather to bend towards him 
and to draw him down its vistas with irresistible 
attraction. Still, it was not a strange departure 
from the current of his life. He had already 
served an apprenticeship in Paris, Vienna, and 
Madrid as Secretary of Legation. He had also 
seen the home side of foreign relations under 
President Hayes as Assistant Secretary of State 
within the period of writing the Life of Lincoln, 
in which he had taken an increasing interest in 
national affairs. But on account of political 
awards to be distributed the full Secretaryship 
of State could not be assigned him just yet. It 
was well for him to be allowed to finish his 
share of Lincoln's Life in peace. 

Before his work was completed a Democratic 
President was elected, and of course a Secretary 
of State belonging to the same party was at 
the head of that Department for the next four 

<1^ > 



Literary Labours 

years. The Republican President Harrison, 
who succeeded Mr. Cleveland, said that Hay 
was a good fellow but there was no politics 
in him, had his friends to consider during his 
single term of office, as did his immediate pre- 
decessor and successor when he attained to a 
second term. It was 1896 when it expired 
and Mr. Cleveland surrendered the presidency 
to Mr McKinley. 



•C73> 



IV 

DIPLOMACY 

William McKinley was one of the good 
friends with whom John Hay was associated 
during his five years' residence in Cleveland, 
Ohio. He had been in Congress for seven 
terms from 1876 to 1891, when he was elected 
Governor of his native State and again in 1893. 
By 1896 he had attained to the Presidency. 
During his years in Washington the friendship 
between the two became intimate. In the days 
of democratic administration, Mr. Hay believed 
that his friend would be the next candidate and 
that he would be successful. And John Hay 
would have been Secretary of State if William 
McKinley had not incurred political obliga- 
tions which must be met by first-class awards in 
Washington. There was, however, a vacancy 

-C 74 > 



Diplomacy 

in the London Embassy, and no one was so well 
qualified to fill it as his friend Hay. Accord- 
ingly he was sent to the Court of St. James, and 
thus made the head of the diplomatic corps 
abroad. 

At once he had an opportunity to meet a diffi- 
cult situation. The Spanish war had broken 
out in the first term of McKinley's administra- 
tion. All Europe was inclined to recommend 
America to confine herself to her own coasts 
and let foreign peoples alone.^ Even in Eng- 
land the upper classes became unfriendly after 
the destruction of the Maine^ to some extent, if 
not to the degree of hostility manifested in 
the Civil War. That the Continental Powers 
could not draw England into a joint demon- 
stration off the Cuban coast was largely due to 
the diplomacy of the United States' Ambassa- 
dor. Much also was due to his personality. 

1 On the features of our international position see Chapter 
viii of "American Foreign Policy by a Diplomatist," p. 183. 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

He was no stranger in a strange land. In Eng- 
land and at home he had met men distinguished 
in letters and politics who were ready to wel- 
come him with cordial approval. He was 
familiar with the usages of hall and court, of 
legislation and diplomacy. His quick judg- 
ment and unfailing tact reached beyond regu- 
lated observance to the emergencies of every 
occasion and valuable friendships multiplied. 
Even Her Majesty exchanged an autograph 
and photograph for his photograph and auto- 
graph. 

The value of diplomacy to a nation is vari- 
ously estimated even in the halls of Congress. 
The hasty judgment of the unthinking is apt 
to regard it as an office to be filled by persons 
who have missed of promotion at home or 
whose presence there is as inconvenient to rulers 
as was that of "Junius" or Sir Philip Francis 
when he was sent to India to fill a position of 
honour and profit to himself for the peace of 



Diplomacy 

George III and his Ministry. Only a few now 
believe that "an ambassador is a clever man sent 
abroad to lie for his country," according to Sir 
Henry Wotton, and still fewer that he is hon- 
ourably expatriated for the good of his native 
land. These are as antiquated views of diplo- 
macy as those formulated by Ancillon and 
Count de Garden for the necessity of it, based 
on the conviction that "whoever can do us harm, 
wishes, or will sometime wish, to injure us and 
is our natural enemy, and whoever can injure 
our neighbour is our natural friend. These are 
the pivots upon which all international inter- 
course turns." With this belief goes the dogma 
that injury consists in taking away territory and 
trade, power or position on the one hand, or on 
the other that advantage arises from expansion 
and acquisition, commercial prosperity and a 
higher place in the parliament of the nations. 
No higher principle is here implied than a 
supreme regard by nations for their interests. 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

and the chief concern of governments is to guard 
and promote them. Reduced to its plainest 
terms the formula is to be written in the simple 
and undiplomatic words, Keep what you have 
got and get what you can. 

The earliest means employed by neighbour- 
ing tribes was war; the next, conference. "My 
neighbour's land belongs to me because I have 
eaten him," said the primitive man of the Pacific 
Isles, and his peaceful successor answered his 
confessor's exhortation to forgive his enemies, — 
"Bless your soul, I have no enemies: I have 
killed them all." This was the short and easy 
method of the strong with the weak until a 
stronger came into the field. When he did, the 
weaker cast about for some less perilous method 
of adjusting differences and sent messengers to 
arrange terms satisfactory to the stronger. By 
the sixteenth century it was found convenient to 
keep embassies in residence at foreign courts to 
speak for their home governments without delay 

•C 78 > 



Diplomacy 

and to observe indications of hostility that 
might arise. More and more as the centuries , 
passed diplomacy came to be a science, strategic 
largely, but gradually making for good un- 
derstanding and peace, with war as a last re- 
sort. 

Until 1896 the United States had dealings 
with foreign powers as an isolated republic, ] 
having no interests abroad beyond those of 
commerce, and with nothing alien to interfere 
with American policy at home except Florida, 
the vast Louisiana territory, and later the prox- 
imity of Spanish conditions in Cuba, which 
were bad enough to demand interference in the 
name of humanity and good neighbourhood. 
But in undertaking this praiseworthy enterprise 
the government was drawn away from its tra- 
ditional policy of non-interference with foreign 
lands and found itself in possession of remote 
islands in the Orient, once belonging to Spain. 
The Powers of Europe and the East began to 

< 19 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

take notice of the departure by the Republic 
of the West from its previous attitude. It 
had become a world-power like themselves 
and might have to be reckoned with according 
to their own methods. 

Whatever was new in the situation con- 
fronted John Hay as Ambassador-in-chief of 
the United States in Europe. There had been 
little since the Civil War to perplex our rep- 
resentatives in London, and during the war 
it was foreign meddling with us as an isolated 
people attending to its own affairs. But in 
the next war it was our interference, for good 
reasons of course, with an ancient kingdom 
with traditions held sacred by imperialists 
from the British Channel to the China Sea, 
and they asked what should be done about the 
unwonted action of this hermit nation of the 
West. 

To Ambassador Hay it fell to explain at 
the principal court of the nations what were 

-C 80 > 



Diplomacy 

the causes of the war with Spain, its pur- 
pose, its justification, what would be its satis- 
factory issue, and final adjustments. The re- 
ception his explanation received in London 
would determine largely the sentiment to pre- 
vail elsewhere. The story of his two years' 
residence is a part of diplomatic history, more 
or less disclosed and understood; but whatever 
in it is a record of wise management, of honour- 
able dealing, and noteworthy success must be 
attributed to the skill, prudence, and decision 
of John Hay. Of his diligence in the nation's 
business it was remarked by an English states- 
man that he did twice the work of his prede- 
cessors in their longer tenure of office, and of 
its effect the reply of a prime minister to a 
suggestion to join in a hostile demonstration 
off the coast of Cuba may be taken as an indi- 
cation: "Yes, I have been thinking of this, 
but in connection with the American fleet." 
No European government was anxious to med- 

•C 81 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

die with the agreement of two Anglo-Saxon 
countries. 

Moreover, this agreement was due more 
than to anything else to that weight of per- 
sonal character which enables one to deal with 
other men in council. Dignity is its outward 
phase, reserve its inner disposition, but justice 
and fair-play are qualities which win over 
greed and power. These considerations always 
appeal to Englishmen sooner or later, and Mr. 
Hay was not long in coming to a good under- 
standing with members of the British Govern- 
ment so that he could assure President Mc- 
Kinley of the co-operation of England and 
of the consequent non-interference of the rest 
of Europe, and the ultimate success of the 
undertaking to limit the future career of Spain 
to its own peninsula. For centuries it had 
spread its blight over the fairest spaces of the 
Western World and in tropical isles. From 

the last of them the pestilence had been swept 

-C 82 > 



Diplomacy 

by our army and navy; but back of these was 
the consent of Powers won by the diplomacy of 
John Hay. 

Thus his first important transaction in the 
domain of the larger politics ended with great 
honour to himself and with the good will of 
the nation with which he had dealt. He fol- 
lowed a distinguished company who had rep- 
resented the country in England from one war 
to another — Adams, Lowell, Phelps, Bayard, 
— more eminent than English envoys here, 
but he kept their high standard and, with the 
exception of the first, under conditions more 
difficult to meet. As he had won pre-emi- 
nence in literature, so now he had. added equal 
distinction in diplomacy, and his honourable 
name and record were known in every nation. 
No more distinguished American could be men- 
tioned in public life and none with such a 
world-wide acquaintance. Never seeking or 
apparently caring for an elective office, he 

-C 83 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

seemed to have reached the summit of achieve- 
ment in the higher ranges of political activity, 
international instead of merely national, for- 
eign as well as domestic. Yet a still greater 
distinction awaited him. 

In the autumn of 1898 the Secretaryship 
of State became vacant and President McKin- 
ley*s way was clear to appoint the best man 
to the office irrespective of political obligations. 
The one man, whose education for the posi- 
tion rivalled that of Europeans, trained ac- 
cording to the custom of their countries, was 
at the Court of St. James. His recall was im- 
mediate for promotion to the chief place in 
the Cabinet, in which he was to achieve still 
greater eminence and world-wide renown. Di- 
rectly the Spanish questions following the war 
met him on the threshold. Diplomatic rela- 
tions with a nation which had just been com- 
pelled to accept defeat required more than 
ordinary knowledge and tact to re-establish. 

-C 84 > 



Diplomacy 

Sympathising powers here and there had to be 
treated with discretion and sometimes with 
valour. Treaties were to be reconstructed, 
territory re-distributed, prisoners returned, and 
new governments ordered with such guarantees 
of safety and peace as could be given in far- 
off islands of Eastern seas and with uneasy 
Cuba and the Western isles near by. If it 
cannot be truly said that the United States 
had not been strictly a world-power, there 
were certainly some wider questions arising 
than had previously confronted the nation and 
its Secretaries of 'State. In the midst of deal- 
ing with issues of the Spanish War another 
came up which required still wider outlook, 
more careful procedure, and immediate action. 
A brief restatement of the cause which led to 
it will recall what was once before the public. 
In 1897 the supremacy of America in steel 
industries began to be looked upon with anx- 
iety by Germany and Russia in their poverty 

-C 85 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

of ores. Looking for a supply it was discov- 
ered, or already known, that an abundance 
could be found in northern China not far from 
the coast. To obtain the desirable provinces 
it would be as impossible to march in and 
take them as to cut a slice out of a hornets' nest. 
Accordingly it was suggested that all commer- 
cial nations assemble for a wholesale division, 
each one taking a share of what Germany and 
Russia left. These two powers, however, were 
in such haste that their premature aggressions 
caused the nest to swarm, and in consequence 
the German minister was murdered on June 
20, 1900, the legations attacked, war provoked, 
with the division of China almost inevitable, 
industrial occupation by foreigners and the ruin 
of American enterprise to follow. It looked 
like a commercial calamity to be warded off; 
but there were also humanitarian issues to be 
considered and speedily, for trouble had begun. 
It was the United States against the kingdoms 

-C 86 > 



Diplomacy 

of Europe, interested or indifferent, and John 
Hay to deal with their diplomats. He lost 
no time in doing this and took them by sur- 
prise. In opposition to them all he urged the 
recognition and assistance of the Chinese Gov- 
ernment, which had been put out of commis- 
sion by internal disorders amounting to an- 
archy, and incidentally he appealed for the 
maintenance of peace with China. To make 
his recommendation effective he proposed that 
the President send troops to occupy Pekin, to 
co-operate with the viceroys, and protect lega- 
tions. 

It was a bold stroke with respect to the 
Powers who were gathering together in con- 
templated coalition like eagles around the car- 
case. Some of them had already established 
themselves in the land. It was also bold with 
respect to the Chinese who had already re- 
pulsed a British admiral. Nevertheless, Pekin 
was occupied and the legations with their de- 

<^7 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

pendants protected. Mr. Hay had averted a 
serious catastrophe. Then he set about with- 
drawing one Power after another from the al- 
liance which wished to partition the Celestial 
Empire among themselves. Gradually the 
confederacy of vultures dissolved, England and 
Germany being the last to take their homeward 
flight. The integral existence of China was as- 
sured, and also German competition with the 
principal American industry was prevented. 
Of course it had the appearance of a two-sided 
transaction. It was commendable in that it 
was such. Diplomacy contemplates material 
advantages alone, for the most part, and the 
profit of the diplomat's country. If this is se- 
cured its reason for maintenance is justified. 
But when in addition to this primary object 
a great service is done for a land threatened 
with division through the greed of a more pow- 
erful government, by the intervention of an- 
other nation for its own advantage and inci- 
te 88 :> 



Diplomacy 

dentally for the "entity" of the weaker, then 
it is praiseworthy that diplomacy has a double 
edge. Duplicity is supposed to be its main fea- 
ture, and to darken counsel with dubious words 
its chief accomplishment. In this instance, as 
in all of John Hay's dealings with the diplo- 
mats of his time, his speech and writing were 
so frank, sincere, and direct that the ceremonial 
equivocators whom he addressed found in his 
unmistakable communications a quality as new 
and characteristic as that which had interested 
them in his literary ventures. It was not 
European, Asiatic, or Oriental; but it was im- 
mediately intelligible and honest, with abound- 
ing good sense and loyalty to the principles of 
the Golden Rule, which appeals to the inmost 
conscience of even a diplomat. 

If, however, there had been in this affair 
only the single purpose of protecting Amer- 
ican interests by insisting upon the unbroken 
integrity of the Flowery Kingdom, there would 

<^9> 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

have been a compensatory act in the subsequent 
remission of a large part of the indemnity to 
be paid the United States on account of the 
damages and injuries occasioned by the Boxer 
outbreak. This return to China of values run- 
ning into millions was a graceful, generous, 
and gratuitous deed which was appreciated by 
its people as better by far than encroachments 
on their territory for any assumed advantage. 
A contented race of 425,000,000, largely villag- 
ers, quietly pursuing their simple occupations in 
the ways their ancestors followed them for thou- 
sands of years, concerned chiefly with the pres- 
ent life and for their religion worshipping the 
memory of their forefathers — such a people 
had no longing for "foreign devils" and their 
labour-saving machinery, nor even for a reli- 
gion which looks forward instead of backward. 
Therefore they have not always hastened to 
meet the commercial advances of Western en- 
terprise nor the self-sacrificing attempts of mis- 



Diplomacy 

sionaries to show them that the future life is 
of more consequence than the present or than 
the past existence of forbears. It was of im- 
mense advantage to the nations outside the wall 
that a breach should be made in it, and some 
benefit to the mysterious Chinaman will inci- 
dentally accrue as the years go by, if invasion 
and appropriation are conducted wisely. It is 
certainly profitable for the Occident that the 
"open door" policy was secured with the con- 
sent of the Chinese by the efforts of John Hay 
when other efforts had failed. To him accord- 
ingly must be awarded the praise for this early 
achievement in his diplomatic career, prepara- 
tory to preserving the Kingdom in its entirety, 
to which the remission of fines for resenting in- 
trusion was a graceful epilogue; not, however, 
without its grain of justice to a people resent- 
ful with at least a granule of reason from their 
own point of view. 

This threefold transaction in the Orient may 
< 9^ > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

be summed up as the achievement of a states- 
man who opened a sealed door; then with up- 
lifted palm held back a horde ready to rush 
in and divide the spoils; and finally remitting 
penalties for a heathen but natural protest 
against Christian greed and intrusion. It was 
all to his credit, or whatever was his share in 
it all, and was appreciated by the simple folk 
who can understand the spirit of the Golden 
Rule as well as the plain precepts of Confu- 
cius; and the memory of the diplomat who se- 
cured an advantage for his own country without 
injury to another will be cherished with grati- 
tude forever. 

In the midst of negotiations in the Orient 
another matter of paramount interest to this 
master of diplomacy presented itself in the Oc- 
cident. If Vasco de Balboa as he stood on 
the crest of the Isthmus of Darien in Septem- 
ber, 1513, did not see a possibility of connect- 
ing the ocean he had crossed with the one he 

< 9^ y 



Diplomacy 

had just discovered, some one did within fif- 
teen years, for Philip II at that time had it in 
mind, but for reasons of his own forbade that 
the scheme should be entertained on pain of 
death. It slept for three centuries, when in 
1826 a line was traced across the neck, to be 
repeated in frequent surveys of different routes 
by different nations with no result until the 
French undertook the enterprise under the di- 
rection of DeLesseps, who had constructed the 
Suez Canal. The completion of fourteen miles 
in nine years, the running out of funds, the pur- 
chase of all rights by the United States, the 
creation of the Republic of Panama after its 
secession from Colombia, and the completion of 
the Canal under Colonel Goethals is a well- 
known story. But the political situation in 
1900 had difficulties and obstructions as well 
as the proposed channel itself, big as Culebra 
Hill. 

One of these was an agreement between the 
< 93 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

United States and Great Britain in 1850 that 
"neither the one nor the other will ever obtain 
or maintain for itself any exclusive control 
over the said [Panama] ship canal; nor ever 
erect or maintain any fortifications command- 
ing the same, or exercise any dominion over any 
part of Central America," with other stipula- 
tions to which within three years this country at 
least wished it had not agreed. For forty 
years the United States attempted to secure the 
repeal or modification of this article, but no Sec- 
retary of State was successful in his approaches 
to the English Cabinet. It fell to John Hay 
to open negotiations, after Congress in 1899 
had provided for the construction of a canal, 
and requested another effort to be made for the 
abrogation of the above, Clayton-Bulwer, 
treaty. The discussion of this important meas- 
ure between Mr. Hay and Lord Pauncefote, 
British Ambassador in Washington, and the 
correspondence with the ministry in London 

-C 94 > 



Diplomacy 

are matters of diplomatic history not needful 
to recount at length. Suffice it to remark, that 
the surrender of guarantees pledged to Great 
Britain by the Treaty of 1850 was not made 
by that power with alacrity and eagerness. 
Joint control of the canal was at length given 
up, and the right to build it ceded to the United 
States; but neutrality was demanded and a 
pledge from the builders to refrain from forti- 
fying it. 

This was far from satisfactory to the Sen- 
ate when the proposed convention came before 
that body, and the press of the country was 
loud in its denunciation of the Secretary of 
State. He was called an incompetent blun- 
derer, an amateur in statecraft, friendly to 
England in consequence of his residence at 
Court. If his maligners had been similarly 
favoured they would have known that a nation 
does not relinquish its rights in one of the 
globe's highways all at once to a rival nation. 

<95 y 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

It was remarkable that Mr. Hay could obtain 
what no other Secretary had secured. But it 
was not enough; and while the Senate ham- 
mered on the treaty the press pounded the 
American party to it. Such criticism was as 
new to Mr. Hay as it was painful. He had 
done his best with the representative of a con- 
servative government having large commercial 
and maritime interests. No one could have 
done better. He got the thanks one sometimes 
gets for doing his best. However, he did not 
resign; and when the treaty proposed had been 
sufficiently amended he wrote a new one, skil- 
fully embodying the amendments in another 
draft which promptly received the endorsement 
of the Senate, very much as a man hastens to 
sign a letter as his own which has been revised 
and corrected. This he took to the British 
Ambassador, and after further discussion and 
negotiation the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty was 
signed twenty-one months after the first agree- 

<9^> 



Diplomacy 

ment between the representatives of the two 
countries. 

It was a noteworthy achievement whose con- 
sequences have been growing more apparent 
year by year as the enterprise made possible by 
it has progressed toward completion. If, how- 
ever, it had been a joint affair between even 
friendly nations of one blood, embarrassments 
might have arisen to which the exemption from 
tolls difficulty was but the foreshadowing of 
a serious misunderstanding. Careful as he 
was of American interests, Mr. Hay would 
never have asked for their promotion at the ex- 
pense of other nations, and no legitimate inter- 
pretation of his treaty with England could read 
such a provision into it. 

The same sense of justice toward other pow- 
ers, combined with insistence upon the rights 
and privileges of his own, pervades other 
treaties and conventions and agreements which 
he was continually making. Moreover, be- 

-C 97 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

yond the boundaries of mere justice as deter- 
mined by international law he was always 
suggesting something in the way of mercy and 
humanity. He would do away with penalties 
that were punitive rather than restraining, and 
urged limiting indemnities in China to actual 
losses and to the people's ability to pay, and 
then advocated remission of half the imposed 
obligation by the United States; an example 
which other nations were in no haste to fol- 
low, but which secured the favour of the Celes- 
tials in later agreements, notably in opening 
the ports of Manchuria to American commerce. 
So his plea that their rights be respected in the 
Russo-Japanese War meant more than that 
trade be undisturbed, since portions of the Em- 
pire might have been ground as between two 
millstones. His virtues of patience and per- 
sistence were equally conspicuous upon occa- 
sion; as for instance in dealing with Turkey, 
notorious for its policy of procrastination, in 

-C 98 > 



Diplomacy 

the matter of claims for the destruction of 
American property in the Armenian disorders of 
1895. As far along as 1898 the Sultan "di- 
rected indemnity to be arranged, and sent his 
compliments to the President of the United 
States," but had sent no money two years and 
two months later, when Mr. Hay made another 
request and insisted upon immediate payment. 
Four months afterward $95,000 was paid, in 
accordance with the Ottoman policy of "to- 
morrow." But by Mr. Hay's horologe this 
meant "some day." Its pendulum, unlike the 
poet's clock on the stair, did not say Never, 
Forever; Forever, Never. 

In 1899 it did seem that this Fabian policy 
was prevailing with respect to the settlement 
of the Alaskan boundary between American 
and British possessions. For thirty-two years 
it had remained undetermined when Mr. Hay 
obtained a provisional line, for which he was 
criticised by government supervisors of his 

-c 99 :}• 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

business, whom he patiently tried to reassure, 
and did silence when four years later he con- 
cluded a treaty with Great Britain, establish- 
ing the claims of the United States. Other 
instances of his patience and firmness were 
manifested in his dealings with Russia from 
time to time, and with Germany in 1899 
about the Samoan Islands and on additional 
occasions. 

There was a constant opportunity for the ex- 
ercise of tact and decision, patience and fore- 
sight, by Mr. Hay, whose treaty-making ability 
was called into continual requisition. Fifty- 
eight international agreements were concluded 
during his administration of the Department of 
State, many of them the outcome of long and 
complicated negotiations. Besides, he was 
frequently engaged in efforts to bring about in- 
ternational arbitration, and was always labour- 
ing for the establishment of justice and comity 
between nations in their dealings widi one an- 



\ 

f 



Diplomacy 

other. The Monroe Doctrine for America and 
the Golden Rule for all the world were the f 
ground of his policy. He asked nothing for his 
own country that he would not concede to an- 
other similarly situated, nor for himself that 
he would not yield to his neighbour. And who 
was not his neighbour, at home or abroad^ 
Who ever had so many that were glad to call 
him their friend, from his classmates in 
college to Prime Ministers next every throne in 
Europe and the East*? 

Such services as Secretary Hay performed in 
the Department of State, with insufficient as- 
sistance, were arduous enough to wear upon a 
robust man in the best of health. This incum- 
bent was not well when he reluctantly con- 
sented to come to President McKinley's relief 
in a critical time. 

The first term of laborious service was just 
over when a crushing blow fell upon Mr. Hay 
and family in the sudden death of his son. 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

Adelbert Stone, June 23, 1901, while attending 
anniversary exercises of his alma mater, Yale. 
He was twenty-five years of age, had been his 
father's secretary in London and United States 
Consul to Pretoria, South Africa, where he 
proved very efficient and won the esteem of 
both Boers and British. On his return in 1900 
he was appointed assistant secretary to the 
President. 

Then the assassination of his chief and dear 
friend three months later was another shock 
which contributed to his decline. Increased 
duties and graver responsibilities during the ad- 
ministration which was thrust upon Mr. Roose- 
velt added to burdens and labours which should 
have been thrown off with a sad opportunity. 
As he had enlisted for the whole term he felt 
that he should not desert his post in the day of 
calamity, especially since his continuance in it 
was desired. 

After Mr. McKinley's death, leaving the 
< 102 > 



Diplomacy 

presidency vacant, Mr. Hay would gladly have 
been released in order to travel, write, and rest. 
He had plans for literary work to carry out 
and would have been cheered with the compan- 
ionship of books and friends. But Mr. Roose- 
velt drove straight to his house on his arrival 
in Washington and begged the Secretary to con- 
tinue in ofBce. Had he not yielded it is prob- 
able that the world would have been richer in 
literature by the harvest of a busy life. But 
great national interests needed his statesman- 
ship. 

Accordingly he stayed on and worked on as- 
siduously, patiently, with anxieties which were 
more wearing even than the toil, and with wait- 
ing which was more annoying than labour. 
And all the while the silver cord was loosen- 
ing until the golden bowl was broken. Ap- 
prehending a breakdown, he went to Europe in 
April for change and such rest as the voyage 
should afford him but returned in June little 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

benefited. After a short visit to Washington 
he retired to his summer home on Lake Suna- 
pee, in New Hampshire. It was generally 
supposed that he was convalescing; but a sud- 
den collapse in the morning of July i, 1905, 
was followed by his death. 

One of his classmates ^ sends the following 
from a tribute to his memory: 

"When I read the announcement of the 
death of this distinguished man at his beauti- 
ful home on Lake Sunapee, and that the casket 
was conveyed to the railroad station in a plain 
covered wagon drawn by his favourite white 
horse through the woods, while the rain was 
falling in torrents as if the skies would join 
in mourning for the dead scholar, poet, and 
statesman, I took from my library the volume 
of his poems and turning the leaves to the 
'Stirrup Cup' I thoughtfully read these pa- 
thetic lines:" 

2 Hon Solon Stevens of Winchester, Mass. 



Diplomacy 

My short and happy day is done, 
The long and dreary night comes on; 
And at my door the Pale Horse stands. 
To carry me to unknown lands. 

His whinny shrill, his pawing hoof, 
Sound dreadful as a gathering storm; 
And I must leave this sheltering roof, 
And joys of life so soft and warm. 

Tender and warm the joys of life, — 
Good friends, the faithful and the true; 
My rosy children and my wife. 
So sweet to kiss, so fair to view. 

So sweet to kiss, so fair to view, — 
The night comes down, the lights burn blue ; 
And at my door the Pale Horse stands, 
To bear me forth to unknown lands. 

The burial service was held in the chapel of 
the Lake View Cemetery at Cleveland. The 
coffin was carried to the grave during the sing- 
ing of "Crossing the Bar," one of Mr. Hay's 
favourite hymns. The President and Vice- 
President of the United States, members of the 
McKinley and Roosevelt Cabinets, the British 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

Ambassador, the Governor of Ohio and many 
other distinguished men were present. Services 
were also held in the Presbyterian Church of 
the Covenant, of which Mr. Hay was a de- 
vout member and a trustee. The diplomatic 
corps attended in a body and the most of offi- 
cial Washington. In St. Paul's Cathedral, 
London, services were conducted by the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, Dean Gregory, and Arch- 
deacon Sinclair, the edifice being crowded. In 
Rome also services were held in the American 
Episcopal Church. Press comment was uni- 
versal in its commendation of his labours and 
eulogistic of his career as a statesman and his 
character as a man. A few representative ex- 
amples may be given here: 

A Southern journal ^ charges the success of 
two administrations to their Secretary of State 
and their failures to disregard of his advice, de- 
claring that his most strenuous struggles were 

3 Atlanta Journal. 



Diplomacy 

not with foreign courts but with the United 
States Senate and his defeats were suffered at 
its hands. 

Another paper,^ comparing him with con- 
temporary ministers of foreign affairs, asserted 
that he excelled Tittoni, Von Biilow, the 
Marquis of Lansdowne, and Delcasse, and was 
the greatest foreign minister of his time. 

The London Spectator remarked: "He was 
not a politician, never sat in Congress or ran 
for office, or sought favour of any party leader. 
His private life is private, courts unostentatious 
shadows, is unknown to the masses of his coun- 
trymen, a force rather than a personality, some- 
thing in the background that manages to direct 
foreign affairs." And the London Times: 
"Not until the secret history of our days is 
made public will mankind be able to pronounce 
upon the greatness of his work and its signifi- 
cance for generations yet unborn." 

^New York World. 

< 107:}- 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

Five years after his decease, on November 
11, 1910, the library which bears his name was 
dedicated to his memory. It had been made 
possible by the gift of $150,000 by Mr. An- 
drew Carnegie on condition that an equal 
amount be obtained from others, which was 
easily secured from twenty-nine persons. He 
also suggested that the building be a memorial 
to Mr. Ha}'. At the dedication President 
Faunce emphasised the good fortune of Brown 
University in having such an example to hold 
up before its young men, a man whose career 
had a mysterious quality not readily appre- 
hended, glorified by a light which is needed to- 
day in academic halls. Hon. James B. Angell, 
President Emeritus of the University of Michi- 
gan, dwelt upon the fitness of giving the name 
of John Hay to the Library, and called to mind 
his unusual gifts in student days — his extraor- 
dinary mastery of words and of a felicitous 
style, the promise of a brilliant literary future, 



Diplomacy 

fulfilled in so far as he devoted himself to let- 
ters, and the value of such attainments in his 
diplomatic career. Hon. Elihu Root, Senator 
from New York and his successor in office, 
after paying tribute to his personal traits en- 
larged upon his character and achievements as 
Secretary of State, mentioning instances illus- 
trating his distinction in diplomacy, and in his 
labours for the welfare of the human race. 

Professor Koopman, Librarian, closed the 
exercises by receiving the key with an appo- 
site interpretation of the value of the Memorial 
to the present and the future. 

"For the library is the true chambered nau- 
tilus, forever enlarging its bounds, yet never 
relinquishing its old possessions. I accept this 
key also in the name of the unknown and un- 
imagined future, whereof the youngest now liv- 
ing shall see but a fragment." 

On a marble tablet in the entrance hall is in- 
scribed in letters of gold : 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

IN MEMORY OF 

JOHN HAY 

OF THE CLASS OF 1858 

POET HISTORIAN DIPLOMATIST 

STATESMAN 

WHO MAINTAINED THE OPEN DOOR 

AND THE GOLDEN RULE 

THIS BUILDING 

HAS BEEN ERECTED BY 

HIS FRIENDS AND 

FELLOW ALUMNI 



-{:iio> 



V 
IMPRESSIONS AND CONCLUSIONS 

After one has gone out into the Unknown it 
becomes more and more difficult to recall his 
personality as the years go by. The vanishing 
figure grows less and less distinct to those who 
knew it well, while those who had not this ad- 
vantage and must construct a character from 
fragmentary records and differing portraits find 
the undertaking as perplexing as it is unsatis- 
factory. When, however, a man has left im- 
pressions on his age, and has been of sufficient 
consequence to have his acts recorded by con- 
temporaries of various persuasions there is the 
possibility of conjecturing what were the lead- 
ing traits which guided action and formed char- 
acter. If these records and testimonials are 
supplemented by faithful portraiture some idea 

-C 111 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

may be formed of the personality which went 
in and out among its fellows, the children of 
men in the land of the living. 

Beginning with the external and more ob- 
vious, no one could meet John Hay without 
the immediate recognition of his gentlemanly 
bearing. He was born with the essential apti- 
tudes of a gentleman, he cultivated them with 
other gifts in college without being a dude, as 
he certainly was not a husky of the modern 
type. In what was to him a graduate school 
in Washington he met opportunities of learn- 
ing the unwritten code of minor ethics — the 
"manners that maketh man" — and often his for- 
tunes ; and if there were other customs in other 
lands his residence in three European capitals 
enabled him, like the languages he learned to 
speak with facility, to be at home with any dig- 
nitary from any country. So when Mr. Mc- 
Kinley appointed him to the office which deals 
with the nations of the world he said: ''To 



Impressions and Conclusions 

my mind John Hay is the fairest flower of our 
civilisation. Cultured, wealthy, with a love of 
travel, of leisure, of scholarly pursuits, able to 
go where he likes and do what he likes, he is 
yet patriotic enough to give his great talents 
to his country." Incidentally and by contrast 
it may be remarked that sundry critics of the 
baser sort did not appreciate these attainments 
and denounced the President for appointing to 
the Court of St. James and to the Secretaryship 
"an exclusive, un-American aristocrat," — whose 
work, however, and convenient abilities and 
friendly ways soon became apparent, and the 
public was won. 

Beyond the correctness of the outward man- 
ner, which another with equal advantages 
might learn, was the kindheartedness which 
made his gentlemanliness spontaneous and un- 
failing. There were plenty of occasions and 
people to test his good nature, patience, and 
temper. Bores, place seekers, impecunious 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

travellers, fortune hunters, were daily incidents 
of his life at home and abroad. He was days 
in disposing of a man with a mission without 
offending him. He was not so long in getting 
rid of liars, who were his bane, but it was done 
by diplomatic and effective politeness. Of a 
certain titled European he said: "When the 
count comes to talk to me I know he is lying. 
What I try to find out is why he is telling that 
particular lie." It is safe to say that my lord 
did not suspect from Mr. Hay's treatment of 
him the purpose of his conversation. To men 
of good will who approached him he was 
"sweetness and light" whatever their station, 
from the professional masseur who had treated 
officials in foreign capitals and our own for 
years and remarked, "Mr. Hay is the finest 
gentleman I ever knew," up to dignitaries 
who met him on matters of high concern and 
paid tribute to his unfailing courtesy and his 
knowledge of when and how the right word was 

< ii4> 



Impressions and Conclusions 

to be spoken and the fitting deed done. Men 
of the press, not easily deceived, always had his 
sympathy in an occupation about which he 
knew so much, and were ready to say with one 
of their number: "He was like a father, 
brother, philosopher, guide, and friend, rolled 
into one." 

President Roosevelt's intimate friendship 
with Secretary Hay was reciprocated with the 
fondness which arose from complementary 
qualities, the high spirits of the one and the 
quiet humour of the other making their Sun- 
day afternoon walks together a joy to both. 
Mr. Roosevelt's record of them may be 
summed up in the tribute, — "Mr. Hay was the 
most charming man and delightful companion 
I have ever known." If there were only a Bos- 
well to report those walks and talks ! The sur- 
vivor said they nearly always ended in a dis- 
cussion of Abraham Lincoln. 

While Mr. Roosevelt was his Sunday after- 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

noon companion, his week-day partner in pre- 
prandial strolls was his next neighbour, Mr. 
Henry Adams, the historian. It was the day 
of the top hat and frock coat, which Mr. Hay 
invariably wore with the punctiliousness which 
he always observed in conventional matters. 
Then he dressed for dinner and evening. It 
was a part of his sense of fitness and of what 
was due from a man in his station. 

The mention of Mr. Lincoln's name suggests 
two qualities which an early intimacy between 
the elder and the younger man developed. 
President Lincoln had no end of opportunities 
for charity and patience. He came into office 
when it was impossible for either half of the 
nation to make allowance for the attitude of 
the other. His fatherly love embraced North 
and South; therefore he was maligned by each 
section because he did not at once discard the 
other. 

But throughout the strife with all its mis- 



Impressions and Conclusions 

understandings he kept his charity for all and 
to the last treated all as the members of one 
family whose unity could not be destroyed 
by dissension. This large-mindedness the 
young man witnessed day by day and in those 
sleepless nights when his chief used to call him 
to converse or to read the dramas of kings and 
their warring people; or in the strain of anx- 
iety, of the lighter follies which make life a 
comedy. There was the humour of a heart 
which might have been broken without this sav- 
ing grace. But both the charity and the hu- 
mour were always before the young man at an 
age when character is moulded, and finding 
them germinant gave them an added impulse to 
grow and harden into abiding principles and 
dispositions. That they were personal pos- 
sessions, however, and not mere imitations may 
be observed in the respective shades and texture 
of the humour at least, the consequence, per- 
haps, of the different environment which sur- 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

rounded each in early life, the one in the wilder- 
ness, the other in a cultivated home. 

But, according to the proverb, charity will 
cover a multitude of offences, one's own and 
other people's, and a sense of humour will gloss 
the rest if it does not forget them. For these 
two qualities Mr. Hay found abundant need 
in his official life. Among men of diverse 
training in several lands, and of differing inter- 
ests in his own country, there was frequent oc- 
casion for the largest allowance to be made, 
particularly in the Senate, where his treaties 
and agreements with the nations had to go for 
reading and assent. What would become of a 
Senator's wisdom, fresh from 'Wayback, if he 
could not suggest something better than the 
proposal of a mere diplomat who had been out 
of the country so long as to lose his per- 
spective? When it took two years to correct 
his own there was often a chance for charity 
if not for humour. So the great treaty-mak- 



Impressions and Conclusions 

ing Secretary, the like of whom in wisdom and 
efficiency the nation has never seen, who 
changed the whole system of dealing with the 
nations, patiently and charitably waited for 
many a politician to come to his senses and to 
get out of the sectional ruts in which he had 
ridden and his father before him. Meantime 
the Secretary kept down his wrath with the hu- 
mour that lies in the saw — "What fools these 
mortals be !" By and by some of them came to 
confess it. 

A trait which made his surpassing abilities 
the more conspicuous was his modesty. Of 
course it does not always accompany talent. 
If the possessor of great attainments is sub- 
limely unconscious of his gifts and acquire- 
ments, and if a grudging world is slow to pay 
homage openly, there are always well-disposed 
friends who will not let such an one go through 
life unconscious of his endowments. Besides, 
the recognition that comes with place and hon- 

< ii9> 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

Durable service declares the ability required to 
fill exalted position, making it impossible for 
one not to know what he is worth in the world. 
Mr. Hay could not have been ignorant of his 
pre-eminent value to the nation, and of his 
achievement in the domain of letters. His 
modesty appears with the latter. Of his 
poems he wrote in a personal letter: "I do 
not think much of my poems. They have had 
an enormous success, both in this country and 
in England, but I think it will be ephemeral.^ 
I got the story of 'Little Breeches' from a ser- 
mon by Mr. Winans of Hamilton. The char- 
acter of 'Jim Bludso' was to a certain extent 
founded on Oliver Fairchild of Warsaw, of 
course not intended for a likeness. I have forgot- 
ten the name of the boat on which he perished." 
In another letter he spoke of "Some Verses" 
by Helen Hay, his daughter: "There is the 

^ Yet Geo. C. Eggleston says he was "prouder of that very 
human verse than of anything else he had done." Current 
Literature, 39:132. See note 2, Chapter II. 



Impressions and Conclusions 

true thing that I should have liked to do when 
I was young." After all, the Ballads are the 
effusions of youth, and not associated easily 
with two masterly addresses that he wrote for 
delivery in London forty years later, on Omar 
Khayyam and Sir Walter Scott. They are the 
measure of what the years and labour had done 
for him. Yet of these "two literary gems 
which established his reputation as a speech- 
maker in England" he wrote: "You never 
saw a people so willing and eager to be bored as 
these blessed John Bulls." 

It may be said here of his public speaking 
that he was not fond of employing his gifts in 
this direction. He was nervously apprehensive 
for days before an important occasion. This 
anxiety does not of itself always insure suc- 
cess, but it is a rare speaker who does well 
without it; and often his prosperity is in pro- 
portion to his fear — for the first few sentences. 
It may not have been the secret of Mr. Hay's 

< 121 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

achievements, for they were based upon knowl- 
edge of what should be said, a wide acquaint- 
ance with the best literature of every kind, and 
an unfailing discrimination between what was 
fitting and what was not. A word in bad taste, 
an untimely witticism, an inappropriate anec- 
dote, above all a story that was near spoiling 
from age or vulgarity, cannot be imagined as 
proceeding out of his mouth, because it could 
not abide in his heart with the hospitality which 
is apt to entertain a story broader than its 
point. Often what is called "a good one" has 
breadth as its principal dimension. It was 
never so in his speaking. His wit was not of 
that order. So too, it may be said of his ora- 
tory, — it did not belong to the first half of the 
last century, the billowy and thunderous style. 
Instead, it was quiet, clear, incisive, humorous. 
It was also reserved for needful occasions. 
Still, this accomplishment is next to that of di- 
plomacy in foreign courts, and sometimes the 

-C 122 > 



Impressions and Conclusions 

public address at a state banquet is more effec- 
tive than the "note" of an ambassador. In 
choosing him, his ability to conciliate and fa- 
vourably impress the public is always taken into 
account in the appointment. For fifty years 
the government has been fortunate in this re- 
spect, in no instance more so than in Mr. Hay's. 
The man who could reveal himself in semi-offi- 
cial attitude, and his large-mindedness and cos- 
mopolitan spirit, with loyalty to his own coun- 
try, was admired by men of every nation. 

If his modesty was conspicuous when 
obliged by correspondents and friends to re- 
fer to his literary product, it was still more ap- 
parent when his public services were mentioned. 
These sometimes justified defence — ^more at 
the time than since, when the wisdom of his 
policies has become more evident than in the 
days when party politics and personal interests 
clouded issues of vast consequence. But it was 
not easy to extort explanations. Occasionally 

-C123:}- 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

blind and blundering opposition would force 
out a plain estimate of its author's folly, but 
not of his own wisdom. This might be justi- 
fied, as in the gospel, by its children — the re- 
sults — ^but not by its possessor. It is difficult 
to imagine the great Secretary making official 
use of the first personal pronoun, a man who 
abolished the antiquated system of American 
diplomacy and introduced a new order; whose 
methods surpassed those of Bismarck aad his 
own predecessors in Europe. He was as modest 
as he was eminent. He did not need to sound 
his own praise. History will take care of that. 
From what has just been said it will be 
guessed that in common with all eminent states- 
men he did not escape contemporary criticism. 
It sent Daniel Webster to an untimely grave, 
and hastened the end of others before and after. 
Possibly in the scoring that the Roosevelt ad- 
ministration received concerning the appropria- 
tion of Colombia the Secretary of State's share 



Impressions and Conclusions 

of blame fell more disastrously upon him than 
upon his chief, whose shoulders are broad and 
his cuticle pachydermatous. Apologists will 
say that an obstructive principality, like the 
negro half a century ago, had no rights that a 
white man was bound to respect, especially 
when these might block an international thor- 
oughfare. Therefore it was no crime to lay out 
a waterway, as a town would a street, and pay 
damages later. But there were steps in this 
proceeding that were condemned on abstract 
grounds and Mr. Hay received his part of the 
criticism. 

The controversy need not be reviewed. 
Let the end justify the measure, — also let 
the nation adjust any rightful claim. It was 
far-seeing wisdom that removed the English 
impediment which stood in the way of con- 
structing the Panama Canal ; and it was equally 
essential that a lesser obstacle be disposed of 
if inclined to delay the enterprise of world-wide 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

consequence. Mr. Hay saw this, and that 
reparation was by no means impossible. His 
accusers saw an opportunity to annoy him. 
How well they succeeded may be hidden among 
the causes which hastened his untimely demise. 
The worry of his official station shortened his 
life more than his work, which was sufficiently 
burdensome. In 1899 he wrote from Wash- 
ington about a literary project: "It would be 
only a few hours' work, but I have not the 
two or three hours at my disposition, and do 
not know when I shall have them. I am 
worked and worried almost into idiocy." And 
the next year he wrote a publisher about an 
introduction to Irving's "Sketch Book": "I 
know you would not ask me to do it if you 
knew the state of cerebral fatigue in which 
every night finds me. It is absolutely impossi- 
ble for me to pledge myself to a single hour 
of literary work while I am here." That this 
sacrifice of letters to diplomacy was a genuine 

< 126 > 



Impressions and Conclusions 

surrender on his part must be evident to any 
who understands the promise of his early years 
and the achievement of the later. He could 
not be unconscious of the triumphs of his diplo- 
matic career, and could believe that his name 
would go down as the great statesman of his 
age. But where there is one who knows this 
there are hundreds who have read his "Ballads," 
"Castilian Days," and chapters in the "Life of 
Lincoln." They would now welcome what 
more he might have done if he had not been 
prevented by laborious days and anxious 
nights, and would have valued what they could 
understand and enjoy above the higher attain- 
ment and the vaster importance of the great 
emprises beyond their care and comprehension. 
And if his own preferences be not misunder- 
stood, John Hay, the man among his fellows, 
might to-day rather be remembered for some 
later gem of verse or prose than for some stroke 
of statecraft by which the nation is profiting. 

-C 127 :> 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

These are so many that it may be regretted for 
his sake and ours that one or two cannot be 
exchanged for some literary treasure whereby 
the world would have been made richer and 
better. The only consolation is that other pens 
can keep up an abundant supply of reading, 
while only one brain in a century can lead na- 
tions into ways of pleasantness and paths of 
peace. It is the noblest and largest work that 
a talent equal to it can accomplish, and the 
man who does it rises above his associates and 
his age, their politics and their wealth, their 
poetry and their prose. 

Therefore the statesman could afford to 
leave authorship until the task should be fin- 
ished, which he wished to drop when President 
McKinley fell. He reluctantly consented to 
complete the broken term and continued after 
much soliciting into another. It must have 
been with diminishing hope that he should take 
up literary work once more when he felt his 



Impressions and Conclusions 

strength failing. But he was not a man to 
complain if the useful made the agreeable im- 
possible. He was serving his country as truly 
and in a larger way than in the field of let- 
ters or on the battle field. Nor did he seek 
the still higher position which he could have 
filled with credit to himself and with honour 
to the nation. He was content to sacrifice 
himself in the station to which he was sum- 
moned, knowing perhaps that no other public 
servant could do for the country what he was 
bom to do and qualified by rare experiences. 

To accomplish such a mission to his country 
and the world demands one or two qualities 
which Mr. Hay possessed that must not be 
overlooked among elements of his greatness. 
One of these is the constructive imagination. 
Almost any wise man can see the present con- 
dition of things and make the best of the situa- 
tion. It is only one in a thousand who dis- 
cerns with prophetic vision the better state that 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

might be, the righting of ancient wrong, the 
maintenance of inherent right, the upholding 
of enduring principles, and the coming of the 
kingdom of righteousness and therefore of peace 
in all the world. This great peacemaker- 
through-justice had such visions, almost poetic 
and even baseless to his associates. He saw 
the nations as a family, with their family quar- 
rels, to be sure, but settling them without fratri- 
cide, and before a tribunal august and authori- 
tative as could be assembled from among the 
wisest and best of the earth. 

He was among the earliest to urge such a 
movement away from barbarism towards a 
civilisation higher than the highest; for his own 
country had only just laid down its brotherly 
swords, drawn in defence and for the aboli- 
tion of an inherited wrong inflicted upon a cap- 
tive race, and for the expulsion of further tyr- 
anny in the Islands. And when other war- 
clouds arose on distant horizons in Europe and 

< 130 > 



Impressions and Conclusions 

the East he held up the Sign of the Son of 
Man before the powers who were inclined to re- 
spect its meaning. When they observed its 
spirit it was to their honour and profit, as in 
China; when they did not, it was Russia and 
Japan. But it was always the principle of the 
divine precept that he maintained, to be fol- 
lowed by nations as by persons, to do as they 
would be done by instead of as they could be 
done by. How much he contributed toward 
making this rule operative is seen more clearly 
as the years wear on. What could be discov- 
ered in his lifetime is a part of his record. It 
will grow plainer as the mists of the morning 
clear away, the morning whose dawn he intro- 
duced for his own land and for the people who 
had been sitting in darkness. His constructive 
imagination saw such possibilities as when great 
discoverers find an unknown continent, an un- 
seen planet, an unsuspected ether. He be- 
lieved in human and humane possibilities; his 

< 131 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

belief was the ground of his action, and both 
together were the cause of his success. He 
imagined with a prophet's outlook that the right 
sense in humanity would balance the wrong, as 
one continent is the counterweight of another. 
To iind the better consciousness and develop it 
and cultivate it was the large endeavour of his 
official intercourse with men and nations. His 
visions were not all visionary: some of them 
were realised through his own efforts and others 
through the good that lives after him and the 
works that follow him. Being dead he speaks ; 
and if men do not hear and obey the voice the 
echo prolonged by the people will be heard in its 
own time. 

His poetic and prophetic vision and imag- 
ination were not, however, the only cardinal 
features of his statesmanship. It is one thing 
to behold or to construct an ideal, another to 
make it a reality. The latter distinguishes the 
man of affairs from the man of ideas; the 



Impressions and Conclusions 

founder of a state from the framer of Utopia 
or the Republic of Plato. Rarely are the two 
elements combined in one person, and the abil- 
ity to devise and execute mingled in efficient 
proportion and balance. It was Mr. Hay's 
crowning distinction that he added efficiency 
to invention, in the largest significance of these 
essential qualities, and in the most difficult 
spheres of their exercise. He had to deal with 
petrified traditions and ossified dignitaries, 
abroad and at home. In Asia, Europe, and 
America he found hoary idolatries and little 
iconoclasm. The breaker of images had no en- 
couragement as such; the reconstructor of ven- 
erable institutions and customs no precipitate 
welcome. 

How then did he accomplish results which 
were at first considered visionary and impossi- 
ble? By what for the lack of a more definite 
term may be called Decisive Persuasion. 
First, he knew what he wanted done: then he 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

had the rarer ability to make others willing to 
co-operate with him. He disarmed suspicion, 
kept nothing back, was so frank and honest that 
circumlocutory diplomats had no occasion to 
darken counsel with words nor misrepresent for 
a reason. He got at men at once. They un- 
derstood immediately his purpose; it was rea- 
sonable, though often too exalted for others, 
but never below the better sentiment of per- 
sonal and national honour. Appealing to this, 
directly or indirectly, he won where shrewd- 
ness or cunning or greed would have lost; for 
old-world diplomacy is a game which its 
masters are trained to play as Mr. Hay was not, 
according to their accepted methods. His own 
surprised them, and based as these methods 
were upon bed-rock principles they transferred 
controversy to new fields, to the surprise of 
some and confusion of others. 

What he said of American diplomacy is em- 
phatically true of himself: "We have gener- 
ic 134 > 



Impressions and Conclusions 

ally told squarely what we wanted, announced 
early in the negotiation what we were willing 
to give, and allowed the other side to accept or 
reject our terms. I can also say that we have 
been met by the representations of the other 
side in the same spirit of frankness and sincerity. 
You will bear me out in saying that there is 
nothing like straightforwardness to beget its 
like." The same may be said of honesty and 
honour, humanity and 'generosity. But in ad- 
dition to these qualities there was a rare gift 
of persuasion which won hearts and minds by 
its reasonableness, its grace, its humour so mov- 
ing that men supposed they were following 
their own bent and unbiased judgment when 
they were unconsciously following his. Not 
because he could make the worse appear the 
better reason, but because his own inclination 
ran with what was right. It also went side by 
side with godliness. In this as in all his ways 
and work there was no display of the broad 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

phylactery and the sounding of a trumpet; but 
throughout his writings, his life, and his char- 
acter ran, like the warp of a fair fabric, the 
unbroken threads of loyalty to divine precepts, 
obedience to the law of the gospel, and the vir- 
tues which the author of the letters to the 
Corinthians includes in his definition of charity, 
both negative and positive. With the essen- 
tial belief and strong faith on which these vir- 
tues rested they together complete the manliness 
which is also godliness. It is a pattern of man- 
hood to be honoured and imitated in its private 
life, its social converse, and its public transac- 
tions. It is a personality to study, an example 
to follow. The more that is recalled, restored, 
and constructed anew as new material is discov- 
ered the brighter the lesson will become and the 
wider its beneficent influence in all the world. 
In the entrance hall of the edifice which bears 
his name is a bronze head and shoulders of John 
Hay by St. Gaudens. There are also several 



Impressions and Conclusions 

excellent portrait engravings here and there in 
various magazines, made at one time and an- 
other from the youthful days before the war to 
the last summer at The Fells. No artist would 
attempt to make of all these representations a 
composite picture and call it John Hay. Only 
one feature could be unchanged throughout all 
the years and this would grow old in wisdom 
and dim with age. It has been called the light 
of the body and the window of the soul ; but to 
describe it is not to portray the body or the 
soul, the mortal and the immortal. Still less 
to picture other features, the form, and the fig- 
ure. But whoever has seen the embodiment of 
all, the totality that makes up the personality, 
differing from every other, will recall certain 
definite lines, with the lights and shadows which 
constitute a substance to the vision and the 
memory. Next to that is the report of what 
others have seen, whose impression is often 
like that of a figure in the distance or the dusk. 

< 137 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

What then are the shadowy outlines which 
can be recalled from the distance of a decade 
in the vanishing years? A figure not towering 
but with the commanding air with which com- 
pensating Nature has endowed certain men 
who like Napoleon have rearranged the boun- 
daries of States and changed their politics and 
policies. As was said of the little conqueror, 
there were times when these men seemed as 
high as a mountain. They became spectres of 
the Brocken in the atmosphere which sur- 
rounded them when the rare occasion came and 
bewildering mists arose from the valley. They 
were not trifled with; they became kings of men 
and masters of perplexing situations. Yet Mr. 
Hay was not repelling nor unapproachable by 
reason of his encompassing dignity. On the 
contrary, his cordial greeting was extended to 
every deserving person and his sympathetic fel- 
lowship to the friends who won his heart. Still 
he was naturally reserved, a lover of quiet in 

-C 138 > 



Impressions and Conclusions 

his happiest of homes, which with a few inti- 
mate friends made that inner circle where one 
reveals more than to the frequenters of the 
office or the throng on the street. 

With the frontispiece portrait before the 
reader there will be no need of facial analysis 
and description. The lines of studious thought 
in the full forehead were intensified possibly by 
suffering in the last years, and the look of the 
eyes is toward problems of doubt and difficulty, 
but its steadiness betokens decision and fixity 
of purpose. Men would know that they were 
not dealing with a reed shaken by the wind. He 
was as incorruptible as a statue of Justice. 
Besides he could show them the beneficent path 
of unselfish and generous dealing with a con- 
quered country and the better way than war. 
Peace must be through righteousness or it was 
no lasting peace. None but Melchizedek could 
be king of Salem. Then these qualities of heart 
and soul were raised to exalted power by the 

< 139 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

mind that directed them into the best and broad- 
est channels. His thoughts were high, his de- 
signs large, his outlook for the future of his 
country and the world commanding. His feet 
were upon the mountains bringing tidings of 
peace. He saw the warring nations beginning 
to fulfil the prophecy of the swords and spears, 
the ploughs and pruning hooks. He helped to 
hasten the dawn of a day on which the sun is 
already ascending and the hopeful hours sweep- 
ing upward. When its noon arrives the world 
will not forget who called to it out of the mists 
of the morning, *'What doth the Lord require 
of thee but to do justly and love mercy and 
walk humbly with thy God." ^ 

2 This was written before the outbreak of the present war. 
Possibly John Hay might not have been utterly cast down by 
it nor have lost his faith in the human kind. Instead, he 
might have seen in the tempest a storm that shall clear the 
air of pestilential vapors and hasten the coming of better 
kingdoms built upon foundations more permanent through 
the corrected sense of the nations. He might also have re- 
garded this turmoil and madness as the final flaring up of 
a blaze from falling brands, to be covered forever with 
penitential ashes and quenched with bitter tears. 



Impressions and Conclusions 

All in all John Hay's name is the symbol 
of what is best in personal character, noblest 
in official station, and highest in national pol- 
ity. Modest himself, others were ready to 
praise him. Retiring, his fellows sought his 
company. Reserved, his sympathies went out 
to the ends of the world. Loyal to his own 
land he remembered that it did not own the 
earth, and that other people loved their coun- 
try. In letters too his verse was the flower of 
fancy springing from the warmth of his heart; 
his Iberian sketches were flooded with the sun- 
set of departing glory; his novel has its les- 
son to striving men ; his biography is worthy the 
noble life which had shaped his own. There- 
fore it is fitting that his monument should be 
the repository of poetry and history, of travel 
and of story. It is well also that at the en- 
trance his face should greet every guest, still 
speaking to each of the highest art — Expres- 
sion; of the courtesy which is the best man- 

< 141 > 



John Hay, Author and Statesman 

ner; of diligence in business; of uprightness 
in life; of fidelity in station; of justice in per- 
plexity; of good- will to all mankind. 



•C142 3- 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Adams, Henry, Hay's neigh- 
bour and friend, ii6. 

Address on Omar Khayyam 
and Walter Scott, i2i. 

Alaskan boundary settlement, 
99. 

Ambassador to Court of St. 
James, 75; definitions of 
the title, 77. 

Ambassadors of the United 
States to Great Britain 
preceding Hay, 83. 

Ancestry of John Milton 
Hay, 2, 5.^ 

Antislavery influences, 7. 

Angell, James B., quoted, 19, 
108. 

Appearance, youthful, 8. 

Authorship, 128, 129; attrac- 
tion of, 72. 

Balboa on the Isthmus of 

Darien, 92. 
"Ballads" and "Castilian 

Days," 127. 
Birthplace, 3. 
Boxer outbreak, 90. 
"Breadwinners The," 70. 
British attitude in Spanish 

war, 75. 



Brown University, 10, 11. 
Burial services, 105. 

"Castilian Days," 43. 

Century, Life of Lincoln In, 
65. 

Cervantes and "Don Quix- 
ote," 48. 

Characteristics, given by 
Hay's classmates, 16, 17, 
18. 

China, 131; and the Powers, 
86, 88. 

Chinese occupations and re- 
ligion, 90; protest, 92. 

Classmates, Hay's, 21. 

Class poem, 14; Howell's 
estimate of, 15. 

Clayton-Bulwer and Hay- 
Pauncefote treaties, 94. 

Collaboration with Nicolay, 
66, 67. 

Companionship, value of to 
Hay, 39. 

Concordia College, 9. 

Criticism by the baser sort, 
113; literary, 71; of Pana- 
ma negotiations, 95. 

Death, Hay's at Sunapee, 
104. 

45 > 



Index 



Degrees conferred, 22. 

Diplomacy, 61 ; call of to 
Hay, 72; American re- 
formed by Hay, 134; 
change of methods in, 119, 
124; congressional estimate 
of, 76; Hay's, 83; diplo- 
macy vs. duplicity, 89. 

Douglas, Stephen A., 24. 

Ellsworth, Hay's tribute to, 

16, 70. ^ 
English interest in Hay's 

early verse, 27. 
Evarts, W. M., 59, 60. 
Executive ability, Hay's, 133. 

Faunce, President, address at 
dedication of library, 108. 

Foreign policy of United 
States, 79; residence, ad- 
vantages of to Hay, 112. 

Garfield, James A., 60, 61. 

Germany and Samoan Is- 
lands, lOO. 

Golden Rule policy, loi. 

Greeley as an editor, 39; 
conference at Niagara, 37; 
nomination for the presi- 
dency, 57. 

Harte, Bret, his verse, 27. 

Hay, Adalbert Stone, loi. 

Hay family, the, 4; John in 
five generations, 4; Helen, 
her poems, 120; Mrs. Hay, 
58; Milton Hay, 9, 23. 

^1 



Hay-Pauncefote treaty, 96. 

Hay's and Harte's ballads, 
28. 

Hay's health declining, 103. 

Hay's humour, 50, 117, 118. 

Hay, John M., synopsis of 
career: schools and in- 
structors, 7 ; acquisition 
and retention, 8 ; minis- 
terial inclinations, 10, 18; 
Baptist and Presbj-terian 
influences, 10; enters 
Brown University, 11; 
Theta Delta Chi Frater- 
nity, 11; Faculty in 1855, 
12; Hay's absorptive and 
creative work, 14; literary 
promise, 14; class poet, 14; 
scholarship, 17 ; character- 
istics and appearance, 18; 
leader in English litera- 
ture and composition, 19; 
vocabulary and translation, 
20; classmates, 21; degrees 
conferred, 22 ; formative 
influences, 23 ; law studies, 
23 ; association with Abra- 
ham Lincoln, 24; cam- 
paigns for, 24; is taken by 
him as assistant secretary, 
25 ; poet of river and 
plain, 25; "Pike County 
Ballads," 26; English in- 
terest in, 27; Hay and 
Harte, 28, 29, 30; later 
poems, 30; life in the 
White House and Wash- 
ington, 31; association 

46 > 



Index 



with Lincoln, 33 ; longings 
for home, 34; labors as 
secretary, 35; responsibili- 
ties in the field, 36; made 
colonel on Hunter's staff, 
and assistant adjutant gen- 
eral, 36; Lincoln's envoy to 
Niagara conference, 36; its 
resuh, 37; Seward recog- 
nises Hay's worth, 38; of- 
fers him place in Paris 
Legation, 38; Lincoln's as- 
sassination, 38; value to 
Hay of association with the 
President, 39; life in Le- 
gation, 40; nominated as 
minister to Sweden, 40; 
charge d'affaires at Vi- 
enna, 40; life in Madrid, 
42; "Castilian Days," 43; 
Spanish customs, religion, 
and politics, 44-52 ; re- 
turn to New York, 54; 
intending to practise law 
in Illinois, 54; v^rites a 
leader for the Tribune, 55; 
is diverted from law to 
journalism, 55; on edito- 
rial staff, 55; opportunities 
and their value, 57; rec- 
ognition as a writer, 58 ; 
marriage, 58 ; political 
friends, 59; confidential 
adviser, 60; diplomatic 
recognition, 6i ; Editor-in- 
chief, 62; Life of Lincoln 
planned, 63 ; collaboration 
with Nicolay, 64; pub- 



lished In Century; authors' 
preface, 65; material, 66; 
history and biography, 67 ; 
a classic, 68; consensus of 
criticism, 69 ; "Breadwin- 
ners" and literary ventures, 
70; the call of Letters and 
Diplomacy, 71 ; apprentice- 
ship in both, 72; Demo- 
cratic administrations, 72, 
73 ; diplomatic prospects, 
74; London Embassy, 75; 
cordial reception at, 76; 
definitions of diplomacy, 
77; primitive forms of, 78; 
explaining a new^ Ameri- 
can policy, 80; diligence in 
business, 81 ; personal in- 
fluence, 82; secures non- 
interference of Europe, 82; 
wins distinction in diplo- 
macy, 83. Secretary of 
State, 84; dealing with 
Spain, 85 ; with Russia and 
Germany in China, 86 
and their diplomats, 87 
dissolves confederacy, 88 
two- fold object, 89; remis- 
sion of indemnity, 90; se^ 
cures the "open door," 91 ; 
masters the situation, 92; 
Isthmian difficulties, 93 ; 
Panama Canal, 94; nego- 
tiations criticised, 95 ; Hay- 
Pauncefote treaty drawn 
up, 96; results, 97; hu- 
mane features of treaties, 
98 ; Turkish procrastina- 



Index 



(Ion, 99; Alaskan bound- 
ary negotiation, 100; la- 
borious service, loi ; death 
of his son, loi ; health af- 
fected, 103 ; continues 
work, 103; death, 104; 
burial and services, 105; 
tributes, 106, 107; Memo- 
rial Library, 108 ; further 
tributes, 108 ; inscription 
«ri tablet, no. 

Impressions, in; per- 
lonality, m; a gentleman 
always, 112; advantages 
of residence abroad, 112; 
democratic criticism, 113; 
annoyances of position, 
BI3; politeness in, 114; 
Jkindness to journalists, 
115; Roosevelt's tribute, 
115; charity and patience 
like Lincoln's, 116; hu- 
mour, 117; need of, n8; 
change of diplomatic 
methods, 119; modesty, 
120; public speaking, 121; 
its quality, 122; and value, 
123 ; absence of egotism, 
124; criticism of Colombia 
appropriation, 124; justi- 
fication of, 125 ; worries 
of, 126; diplomatic tri- 
umphs, 127; as a r an of 
letters, 128 ; statesmanship, 
129; his constructive im- 
agination, 129 ; as a peace- 
maker, 130; faith in possi- 
fatlities, 131; executive abil- 



ity> '33 > decisive persua- 
sion, 133; reformation of 
diplomacy, 134; straight- 
forwardness, 135; manly 
virtues, 136; portraits, 137; 
traditions and impressions, 
138; reserve, 139; stability, 
139; commanding vision, 
140; summary, 141. 

Hayes, Rutherford B., 60. 

Heredity, 6. 

Humane features of Hay's 
policy, 98. 

Hunter, General, 36. 

Imagination, Hay's construc- 
tive, 129, 131. 

Impressions and memories of 
Hay, 138. 

Indemnity, remission of 
Chinese, 91. 

Indiana Monitor, 4. 

Isthmus of Darien and Philip 
11, 93. 

Johnson, Andrew, 40. 
Journalism, Hay's opinion of, 

63. 
Journalists, his kindness to, 

"5- 

"Junius," 76. 

King, Dr. A, W., quoted, 5. 

Koopman, Professor, ad- 
dress at dedication of li- 
brary, 109. 

Legations, Secretary of, 
Paris, 39; Vienna, 40; 
Madrid, 42. 

48 > 



Index 



Leonard, David A., 4. 

Liars a bane to Hay, 114. 

Library, tlie Hay Memorial, 
108. 

**Life of Lincoln," 63, 66, 71. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 23 ; his 
life at the Capitol, 33 ; his 
death, 39. 

Lincoln and Herndon's of- 
fice, 23. 

Lincoln's influence on Hay, 

39- 
Lincoln, Robert, 38. 

McKinley, William, 60, 82; 

tribute to Hay, 112. 
Madrid, Hay in, 42. 
Marriage, 58. 
Milton, Hay's middle name, 

dropped, 21. 

Nicolay, John, 25, 64. 
Morris, W. E., quoted, 8, 17. 

Occident and Orient, 91. 
Open door policy, 91. 
Oratorical gifts, 121; value 
to an ambassador, 123. 

Panama Canal, 93, 125. 
Paris Legation, 39. 
Peace, foundations of, 139. 
Peacemaker, Hay as a, 130. 
Personality, Hay's, 75, 112. 
Persuasive decision, 134. 
Philip Francis, Sir, 76. 



Poems of war time and later, 
30; Hay's opinion of his 
own, 120. 

Portraits, 137, 139. 

Position, annoyances of, 114, 

Prophetic outlook, 102. 

Reid, Whitelaw, 54, 59. 

Roosevelt, T., 102; his ad- 
ministration and Colom- 
bia, 124; tribute to Hay, 
115. 

Root, Elihu, at dedication of 
library, 109. 

Russia and Japan, 131; in 
China, 85. 

Russo-Japanese war, 98. 

Schools, Hay's early, 78. 

Sears, Barnas, President of 
Brown University, 12. 

Secretary of Legations, Hay 
as, 39, 40, 43. 

Secretary of State, as, 72, 84. 

Senate's obstructive criticism, 
96. 

Seward's recognition of 
Hay's worth, 38. 

Slavery in Illinois, 7. 

Spain after the war, 84; leg- 
islation in, 50; its customs, 
44> 48 ; government and 
people, 52; troubles, 79, 
82. 

Spanish war, 75. 



**Pike County Ballads," 8, Spectator, London, on Hay, 

26. 107. 

Pittsfield Free Press, zs- Springfield, Illinois, 9. 

<H9> 



Index 



Stanton, Secretary of War, 

36. 
Statesmanship, Hay's, 127, 

128, 129. 
Stevens, S. W., 18, 104. 
Stone, Amasa, 58. 
"Stirrup Cup, The," 104. 
Summary of qualities, 141. 
Sunapee Lake, 104. 



Thomson, J. D., 9. 
Tilden, S. J., 60, 61. 
Times, the London, on Hay, 

107. 
Transylvania College, 3. 
Treaties and agreements, 

fifty-eight made by Hay, 

100. 
Tribune, the New York, 56, 

62, 63. 
Tributes to Hay, ro6, 107, 

108. 
Turkey, dealings with, 98. 



Twain, Mark, on Hay's Bal- 
lads, 28, 29. 

Vienna, Hay charge d'af- 
faires at, 40; as a diplo- 
matic theatre, 41. 

Virtues, Hay's diplomatic 
and manly, 135. 

Vision, his commanding, 140. 

Warsaw, 111., Hay's home in 
boyhood, 46; his love for, 

33- ^ 

Washington, his life in, 32; 
and opportunities, 112. 

Webster, Daniel, hurt by 
criticism, 124. 

Western influences, 6. 

Wolton, Sir Henry, defini- 
tion of ambassador, 77. 

Writer and editor. Hay as 
a, 58. 

Yale University, 22, 103. 



<iSO> 



3i4.77-2 



